Three of four mobile banking operators remain unprofitable: reasons
After more than five years of the work of mobile banking operators, only one reached profitability, while the rest remain unprofitable. Large banks continue to show interest in the development of this direction, but in order to enter the self -sufficiency of such projects, it is necessary to attract millions of subscribers and save them in the ecosystem, which requires significant costs.
According to the results of 2024, among mobile banking operators (MVNO) who began to provide communication services more than five years ago, only the T-Mobail showed an impressive profit-more than 2 billion rubles. Other operators – Sbermobail, VTB Mobail and Gazprombank Mobail – remain unprofitable. In previous years, these operators also predominantly showed losses or insignificant profit. As explained in VTB Mobayle, « the current net loss is due to large -scale investments in the development of the company and the need to go through the transformation stage. »
Banks position their own MVNO from the point of view of the client as part of the ecosystem, which « will ensure a high level of customer safety due to a single closed technological and information circuit with the bank. » At the same time, their own cellular operators are also interesting for their business. “MVNO is provided to Big Data banks,” the Sbermobayle notes.
The Kommersant source in a large bank noted that « mobile communications is a high -frequency contact channel. » He explains that « a user who receives a connection from the bank more often enters the application, receives fluffs, offers, participates in shares, while banks save on SMS and calls. » According to Julia Yakupova, Director of Banking Ratings of the RA, due to statistics on mobile and Internet livaries, “banks can offer products and services more targetedly, in addition, these data can potentially be used to evaluate the risk of lending.”
Nevertheless, banking mobile operators remain mainly unprofitable, as they have a high cost of attracting (costs for subsidies, marketing, support), including presence in the regions. VTB Mobail CEO Aleksey Chernetsov said that in 2025 it is planned to “increase the geography of presence almost double, covering 68 regions of the work of the Tele2 support operator”.
The Kommersant source in a large bank indicates that the loss of loss will remain until this product becomes massive, evaluating the mass of 5-10 million active subscribers.
In fact, this threshold reached only in the T-Mobayle, where they said that they have more than 6 million active users, among which more than 4.5 million pay the services provided monthly. Other banks do not disclose the number of subscribers of their MVNO. However, VTB Mobayle estimated that the ARPU (average revenue per subscriber) in 2024 amounted to 394 rubles, which is the average in the market for the MVNO networks. Thus, taking into account the revenue of Sbermobail, VTB Mobaille and Gazprombank Mobail, all of them account for about 1.1 million subscribers. Russian cellular operators do not disclose the ARPU indicator for 2024. However, in 2023, according to CNews, for mobile subscribers, it amounted to 407–462 rubles. According to Nexign and Telecomdaily, the average ARPU in mobile communications amounted to 391 rubles in 2024. Experts predict that by 2027 the indicator will grow to 438 rubles. That is, the indicators of mobile bank operators do not actually differ from the indicators of the « large four » of cellular operators.
Banks and their MVNO reluctantly disclose data on their own expenses. However, according to the reports of the New Mobile Communications LLC (operating under the Gazprombank Mobail brand), from 2022 to 2024, one of the founders in the capital of the company was invested 1.26 billion rubles. In 2024, Sbermobail was invested in Sbermobail. The company noted that last year “an aggressive growth strategy was adopted”, which explains the amount of advertising costs of 2 billion rubles. (In previous years, the costs were insignificant). “T-Mobail” spends 200-1000 rubles on attracting one subscriber, previously stated by the head of the operator Vitaly Britis in an interview with Kommersant (See number of June 6, 2024).
However, according to market participants, the strategic goal of bank operators is not a profit from communication, but an increase in LTV (revenue from a client during the use of services) of the ecosystem.
As the interlocutor “Kommersant” in a large bank notes, as soon as LTV/CPA (the cost of attracting) converges, “the loss of loss ceases to be a problem”. The Gazprombank Mobayle expects that due to active work in new channels (marketplaces, offline sections), as well as at the expense of partnerships and in 2025 they will go out for independent financing.
Therefore, the desire to have its own mobile operator drives other banks. Last year, three banks announced the creation of MVNO at once: Alfa-Bank, PSB and Svombank. This year, Alfa-Mobail has already begun to attract subscribers. As the CEO of the company Andrei Litvinov noted, it will take some time to get into profit, « since the market of virtual mobile operators is rich and highly competitive. »
Olga Bazutova
