Mintos to work with third party to enable easier rubles payments
Mintos is setting up a new payments channel with a third-party service provider to enable easier transactions of rubles from its lending companies in Russia.
The European lending marketplace said that transactions will still be limited to 10 million rubles, but would offer a solution for both receiving the payments in rubles and exchanging the rubles to euros.
Mintos said it surveyed its investors to find out what cost they would be willing to bear if it developed alternative routes for the rubles repayments from Russia, given the sanctions on the country amid the Ukraine crisis.
Additional costs would relate to the set-up of new transaction routes, such as fees for third-party service providers, opening new bank accounts and currency exchange costs, Mintos said, adding that the company will not benefit from these costs in any way.
“We found that 80 per cent of investors are interested in getting their payments sooner, with various levels of costs being considered acceptable, ranging from five per cent to 20 per cent,” Mintos said in a blog post on its website. “We started setting up processes for the alternative payment routes for a few lending companies.”
Read more: Mintos originator IDF Eurasia updates on Russia-linked payment delays
The lending marketplace added that setting up an alternative payment route may take time as it needs to be compliant with all sanction-based restrictions, while Russia-authorised lending companies need to adhere to certain rules.
Mintos also said that its lending companies from Russia currently have sufficient assets to settle their liabilities to investors.
In a separate blog post, Mintos announced that more regulated notes are now live on its marketplace, from lending companies Zenka, Eleving North Macedonia, Eleving Albania and Eleving Kenya.
Mintos launched its long-awaited regulated notes last month, which give investors better protection and transparency.
It had been working on transitioning its loan investment product into loan-backed securities since it secured its investment firm and electronic money institution licence in August 2021.
It had planned to launch the notes in the fourth quarter of 2021 but this was delayed because of the limitations of local tax and institutional systems in some EU countries that “were not fully adjusted for new fintech products”.