Russia-to-Kazakhstan personal remittances fell almost 12-fold in August after EU sanctions on “Zolotaya Korona”

Personal transfers from Russia to Kazakhstan dropped almost 12-fold in August to 239 million tenge (45.5 million rubles), according to data from the National Bank of Kazakhstan cited by RBC. For payment companies and PSPs, the useful part is not the headline number itself but the mechanism: once a rail gets hit by sanctions, flows can reprice almost overnight.

1. Transfers in the opposite direction, from Kazakhstan to Russia, fell more than 14-fold to 1.2 billion tenge (228.2 million rubles). RBC said Russia had ranked second by transfer volume in both directions before the sanctions, but has now slipped to fifth and ninth place, respectively, among other countries.
2. The sharp decline followed EU sanctions on the payment system “Zolotaya Korona.” The operator and settlement center behind it, RNKO “Payment Center,” was added to the EU sanctions list at the end of July. Brussels’ 21st sanctions package also targeted the energy, financial, and crypto sectors, and included asset freezes and transaction bans for 94 Russian banks.
3. RBC also reported that personal transfers from Russia to Georgia fell to their lowest level since 2004 in August. According to Georgia’s National Bank, Russia was only 11th among source countries, with $5.1 million, behind Germany, Greece, Israel, Turkey, Spain, Kazakhstan, and others.
4. The Georgia corridor had been much larger just weeks earlier: $42 million in July and $51.4 million in June. Since the start of 2022, monthly transfers from Russia to Georgia had not fallen below $25 million and in some months exceeded $300 million, RBC noted. Transfers from Georgia to Russia fell to zero in August for the first time in the entire statistical series; in July they were $3.7 million and in June $4.3 million.
5. Zolotaya Korona launched in Europe in 2020 under the KoronaPay brand. Its online transfer service was rolled out in 31 countries — all EU states, plus the UK, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. For European operations, Zolotaya Korona registered KoronaPay Europe Limited in Cyprus and received a license from the Central Bank of Cyprus in 2018.