Central Bank Promised to Stop Disguising Consumer Loans as Installments

Hidden fees are also found on marketplaces. According to Kolganov, marketplaces offer various payment methods — credit, installments, and others. The customer clicks through to either the bank's website or a separate resource where "installments" turn out to be a consumer loan. "Accordingly, we are working quickly with the marketplaces and the banks themselves to fix this. But we want these concepts to not be mixed up for consumers in general," he noted.

Kolganov emphasized that the marketplace serves only as a showcase: the products inside are provided by the banks themselves. The visual that the user sees is usually a bank page or a credit broker page. Credit brokers are a separate group of companies not supervised by the Central Bank. "But in this case, we see that marketplaces are actively cooperating with us," he added.

What the BNPL law regulates

The law regulating buy now, pay later (BNPL) services came into force in April 2026. BNPL services allow buyers to pay for goods in installments without overpayments, while sellers receive the full purchase price immediately.

If a citizen's installment obligations exceed 50,000 rubles, the service operator must transmit information to credit history bureaus. This helps banks and microfinance organizations assess the person's debt burden when applying for a loan or credit.

The operator of an installment service can be a legal entity in the form of a business company, as well as a bank or a microfinance organization. If the operator is not a bank or MFI, the minimum capital must be 5 million rubles.

The penalty amount under the contract cannot exceed 20% per annum of the amount of overdue debt. The operator must provide the user with the ability to make early full or partial payment of the installment without charging a fee, and in the case of partial early payment, inform them of the remaining debt, schedule, and amounts of remaining payments.