Prostor and Flint invest $3m in Federal Finance

The two Russian venture capital firms split the total investment amount equally, with each injecting $1.5m into the business.

The financing will allow the group to improve the quality of its services across its websites, as well as enable it to keep up with growing demand by granting more loans through its Platiza.ru site and issuing a higher number of internet passports through its FF.ru site.

Russian market research firm J'son & Partners Consulting states that turnover for Russia's remote financial services (RFS) sector reached RUB 896bn in 2012, representing a 49% share of the electronic payment systems (EPS) market in the country. The firm forecasts that the RFS sector in Russia will reach RUB 2.6tn by 2017, equivalent to 70% of the EPS market.

Company
Federal Finance comprises three online Russian businesses: CreditCardsOnline.ru, Platiza.ru and FF.ru (the National Bureau of Internet Passports).

CreditCardsOnline.ru provides information on credit cards and allows users to create applications for credit cards online. The site currently runs credit card offers from 47 Russian banks and claims to attract in excess of 800,000 visitors monthly.

Platiza.ru provides an online microloan service, offering loans of up to RUB 15,000 for 1-30 days. Loans are issued by instant transfer to bank cards without a request for any documentation.

Customers of Platiza.ru are able to affect the available loan limit and interest rate depending on how much documentation they are willing to provide. The site claims to approve more than 80% of its received loan applications and provides RUB 2m per day in microloans, with the average loan amount sitting at RUB 10,000.

FF.ru provides identification and verification facilities for Russian internet users to allow confirmation of identity online. Customers of the site receive an electronic document that grants access to several online services.

The site claims its identity verification facility takes less than three minutes to complete, due to the development of video identification, and says its services could be effective in dealing with fraud and cybercrime. FF.ru also claims to be the first and currently only Russian internet company that has successfully implemented and legitimised a fully remote personal identification process.

The Federal Finance group was established in October 2010 with the launch of its first site, CreditCardsOnline.ru. The group is headquartered in Moscow.

People
Andrew Guzairov is a founder of Federal Finance. Alexey Soloviev is a managing director at Prostor, while Oleg Seydak is a partner at Flint.

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• Topics
• CEE
• Expansion
• Financials
• Russia