Viber during the year expects to launch in Russia support and exchange for the real currency of its parent company Rakuten's crypto currency, head of Viber Jamal Agahua told reporters on Tuesday.
"Rakuten intends to launch a global launch of its own crypto currency, I've seen a list of countries where the launch is planned and Russia is in it, I expect that within 6-12 months, the crypto currency will be available in Russia via the electronic purse Viber," said D. Agua .
According to him, Viber is currently analyzing Russian legislation for possible options for launching a crypto currency in the country. He specified that for this it is required to obtain a corresponding license from the Central Bank.
At the same time, D.Aghoua noted that now in the electronic purse Viber it is possible to convert the crypto currency into yen, dollars and euro.
In Russia, most likely, the most likely scenario is that the user will be able to convert the crypto currency into Russian rubles in a purse, spend on purchases with payment from an electronic wallet, but will not be able to cash it out through a bank, said Viber's top manager.
Viber is a service for exchanging text, voice and video messages. Viber is available in 193 countries of the world, in Russia the number of active users of Viber in Russia is 45 million per month in Russia (at the end of 2017 the figure was 40 million).
Rakuten is Japan's largest company in the field of Internet trading and financial services, one of the largest e-commerce sites in the world. Since 2005 he works outside of Japan. In 2014, Rakuten bought Viber.