Since April 15, Russian banks have been denied access to the passport authenticity verification service through the Interdepartmental Electronic Interaction System. As Kommersant found out, the disconnection affected all credit organizations in the country. The head of the National Financial Market Council, Andrey Emelin, told the publication that it was a technical failure on the part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the specific reason for which is unknown.
As of Thursday, April 16, the service remains unavailable. The Ministry of Digital Development, in a letter to banks, confirmed that the problem was related to the actions of the service owner, and the SMEV infrastructure itself was working properly. The main blow fell on remote channels: issuing online loans and remote identification of clients are impossible without automatic passport verification against the database of invalid documents. During an in-person visit, a bank employee has the right to visually assess the authenticity of the document.
Market participants note that a short-term failure is not critical, but the protracted nature of the shutdown is capable of paralyzing retail lending. The banking community is preparing an appeal to the Central Bank for clarification on the procedure in the absence of access to the service. As a temporary solution, the use of citizen's digital profile data or indirect confirmation through related departmental checks is being considered. The situation is aggravated by the plans of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to introduce a fee for requests to the service, which, according to experts, will reduce the already affected efficiency of compliance procedures.