ChronoPay Chronopay

ChronoPay is an international processing company specializing in the processing of payments with bank cards and other payment tools on the Internet. In 2005, a subsidiary of the company, CJSC Chronopei, was established in Russia.

The largest clients of the system are MTS, Tele2, Stoloto lottery service, various forex brokers, etc.

The head structure of the system is the Dutch Chronopay B.V. Its main shareholder is the founder of the system Pavel Vrublevsky.

History

2024

Moscow court sentenced ChronoPay programmer to 3 years in prison, who was responsible for the technical part of the company's fraud

On November 29, 2024, the Khamovnichesky Court of Moscow sentenced Dmitry Somov, a programmer, as part of a criminal case against Pavel Vrublevsky, founder of the international processing company ChronoPay, accused of fraud, theft, money laundering and illegal circulation of payment funds. Somov received three years in prison with serving in a general regime colony. Read more here

Bankruptcy of Chronopay founder Pavel Vrublevsky

The Moscow Arbitration Court in September 2024 declared the founder of the Chronopay payment system Pavel Vrublevsky bankrupt, who is under arrest on charges of fraud. The total amount of the entrepreneur's debt is ₽77,3 million. As part of the bankruptcy case, creditors plan to sell property belonging to Vrublevsky and his wife, including an apartment and a summer cottage. Read more here

2019: ChronoPay joins FinCERT

First Deputy Director of the Information Security Department of the Central Bank Artem Sychev and the international processing company ChronoPay signed an agreement on cooperation in June 2019 on countering computer attacks (FinCERT).

The main goal of cooperation will be to study computer incidents to identify patterns of their occurrence and dynamics of distribution, develop development models, prepare forecasts of information security threats and increase the effectiveness of prevention strategies, detect and establish the causes of computer incidents, respond and eliminate their consequences, as well as increase the level of information security of financial transactions.

Also, in accordance with the agreement, ChronoPay will share its experience in countering and preventing phishing and spreading malware during consultations, seminars, conferences on countering computer attacks.

2018: Tax arrears

In July 2018, the Federal Tax Service (FTS) suspended operations on the accounts of Chronopey Vostok LLC, the main legal entity of the Chronopay payment system, with VTB Bank . Information about this is posted on the website of the corresponding service of the Federal Tax Service.

According to CNews, a former employee of Chronopay, the tax debt of the payment system is 2.2 million rubles. The interlocutor of CNews described the very financial condition of the company as not the best.

The company, according to him, earns about 4 million rubles. per month. At the same time, the salary fund of the organization is 2.5 million rubles. per month, and administrative costs are about 1.5 million rubles. per month. In addition, this month Chronopay must pay an annual fee for PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) certification, which is 1 million rubles^[1].

2017: Lawsuit against Tinkoff Bank for refusing obligations under the agreement

According to a representative of ChronoPay, Tinkoff Bank on September 4, without explaining the reasons, unilaterally refused to fulfill the acquiring agreement. Because of this, more than 200 ChronoPay customers have lost the ability to accept payments. Inc. was informed about this by a source familiar with the situation, and confirmed by representatives of^[2] the^[3].

According to a representative of ChronoPay, on July 31 of this year, ChronoPay received a letter from Tinkoff Bank about breaking the agreement and disconnecting all customers without explaining the reasons. ChronoPay claims that 200 customers were affected because of this. ChronoPay owner Pavel Rublevsky, in a conversation with Inc. confirmed receipt of the letter.

Internet payment operator ChronoPay entered into an acquiring partnership with Tinkoff Bank in July 2015. The agreement of the companies does not provide for unilateral termination of the contract, insist in ChronoPay (the agreement contains a clause on refusal to fulfill the agreement, which obliges the refused party to compensate for losses).

ChronoPay had a facilitation agreement with Tinkoff Bank, giving the payment service the right to directly conclude agreements with customers. Under the contract, ChronoPay compensates the bank for returns on outlets if the store itself has not compensated them, and the bank pays ChronoPay a fee for making payments monthly.

The transfer of customers takes at least a few months, so ChronoPay drew up a motivated refusal and asked to give the company time until the end of August. At the end of August, Tinkoff Bank offered the processing company to voluntarily sign a termination agreement and give the bank half of the commission. ChronoPay again made a motivated refusal, but on September 4, the bank blocked payment channels for 200 customers. And a few days before the disconnection of the channels, the bank wrote off 300 thousand rubles for registration in payment systems by the end of August 2018, according to ChronoPay.

Due to the actions of Tinkoff Bank, ChronoPay got into a month and a half of hard work, "said Pavel Vrublevsky, head of ChronoPay, in a conversation with Inc. ChronoPay suffered significant losses when transferring two hundred customers.

2016

Revenue "Chronopey Vostok" - 44.46 million rubles, net profit 172 thousand rubles

According to the Contour-Focus database, the revenue of Chronopey Vostok in 2016 amounted to 44.46 million rubles, management expenses 32.8 million rubles, net profit - 172 thousand rubles.

Opening of a research center in the field of E-Commerce

Since July 2016, the E-Commerce Research Center began operating at Chronopay. The center was headed by Petr Shcherbachenko, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Corporate Governance at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.

The center will begin training employees based on educational products developed at Chronopay. Subsequently, the activities of the center are planned to be directed to the development of a training program for managers and specialists of payment operators, banks and state-owned companies.

2015: ChronoPay becomes an IT company

ChronoPay received accreditation of the IT company in the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation in the spring of 2015. This status allows companies to expect additional development opportunities from the State. The document was signed by Deputy Minister Ismailov Rashid Rustamovich. An entry in the register was made on April 20, 2015 under No. 4984 and No. 4985.

Organizations that develop and support software and whose revenues are 90% generated by these activities can apply for the status of an IT company. "ChronoPay has been using proprietary software since 2003, so the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications promptly processed the received application and entered the company into the register of accredited organizations operating in the field of information technology. The entire process of obtaining status took exactly a month and did not require an excessive package of supporting documents, "the company representatives noted.

2014: Plan to move headquarters from Holland to Russia

Processing company ChronoPay will move its headquarters from Holland to Russia. This was reported to "Ленте.ру" in ChronoPay in June 2014. The company will take this step against the background of the initiative of Yevgeny Fedorov, a member of the State Duma Committee on Budget and Taxes, to introduce a number of restrictions on foreign payment systems, including the introduction of security collateral. According to ChronoPay, processing centers, which will need to be localized in Russia if Evgeny Fedorov's bills are adopted, can be moved from Europe and the United States quickly, without creating interruptions in the work of customers' businesses. When moving the company's headquarters to Moscow, according to ChronoPay, it is possible to begin its cooperation with the Skolkovo Foundation, which has an IT cluster.

2012: Company Sale Plan

On April 3, 2012, it became known that the owner of Chronopay CJSC Pavel Vrublevsky is preparing a deal to sell Chronopay and is creating a media holding RNP (Russian National Programming).

2011

PCI DSS Certification

On July 12, ChonoPay successfully passed certification for compliance with the PCI DSS payment card industry data security standard for the eighth time in its history. Since 2004, SRC has been auditing ChronoPay annually to confirm compliance with PCI DSS. The process of preparing for the next audit takes place throughout the year - an internal audit of processes is regularly carried out, security technologies are improved, the level of security is increased, the system is tested for vulnerabilities, etc. These measures facilitate the rapid passage of the audit procedure for compliance with the standard. ChronoPay plans to certify its payment service in accordance with ISO 27001.

Loss of significant market share and restructuring

As it became known to RBC daily, ChronoPay, after the arrest of its CEO Pavel Vrublevsky and a decrease in the share of the Internet acquiring market by 18%, decided to restructure. In her plans to reduce the Russian staff by 75% and optimize the structure of the company.

Almost immediately after the arrest of ChronoPay CEO Pavel Vrublevsky, his company's share in the Internet acquiring market (payment by bank cards for purchases via the Internet) decreased by about 18%, and most of the employees were released on indefinite unpaid leave, several sources in the e-commerce market told RBC daily. If earlier the company occupied about 45% of the Russian market for non-cash transfers on the Internet, serving large companies MTS, Mosenergo and Trans­aero, now its share has decreased to about 27%, "said another interlocutor of RBC daily in one of the Internet companies.

According to ChronoPay representatives, this information is incorrect and the company still controls the 45 percent segment in the Russian Internet acquiring market, but ChronoPay refused to provide specific figures on the company's turnover.

The head of the e-commerce department Alfa-Bank , Igor Arefiev, agreed to voice a similar indicator with his company.

"Our monthly turnover in June 2011 amounted to $121 million, and Alfa-Bank's market share, according to Visa research, is at the level of 40-41%."

RBC daily sources at Assist (the third major Internet acquiring player) also believe that their market share is about 40%, and announce their company's turnover - about $100 million per month. Assist refused to officially confirm these figures.

Against the background of market loss events, ChronoPay is conducting a pre-planned restructuring, reducing the staff from 100 people, "the new CEO of the company Martins Berkis-Burgs comments to RBC daily on the situation with indefinite unpaid vacations.

"It's about a partial change of team. Not only do we fire, we also hire new employees. So any talk of a crisis here is irrelevant. "

However, the marketing director Assist Sergey Zhirikhin is confident that the owner of 44% of the Russian Internet acquiring market (we are talking about ChronoPay. - RBC daily) cannot perform its functions efficiently with a headcount of 25 people. Mikhail Mamuta, president of the national partnership of microfinance market participants, believes that Internet acquiring market shares could have changed so quickly due to the events with ChronoPay.

"This market is extremely dynamic, since the companies playing on it do not have a physical infrastructure as such, which is why they are all highly exposed to various kinds of risks," the expert notes.

FSB arrested general director Pavel Vrublevsky

In June 2011, the FSB arrested ChronoPay CEO Pavel Vrublevsky. The agency suspects him of ordering a DDoS attack on the website of a competing payment system - Assist. In 2010, Aeroflot's electronic ticket sales system was disabled, which is why the airline refused Assist services and preferred Internet acquiring from Alfa-Bank. Aeroflot also filed a lawsuit for 194 million rubles. to the VTB24, which through Assist provided Aeroflot with payment processing.

The founder of Chronopay has been under investigation since May 2011. P. Rublevsky is charged under Article 272 (illegal access to computer information) and 273 (creation, use and distribution of malicious programs) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Under these articles, he faces imprisonment for a term of 3 to 7 years. From June to December 2011, P. Rublevsky was in jail.

The investigation believes that P. Rublevsky ordered a hacker attack, wanting to get rid of a competitor, since he himself claimed to conclude a contract for the sale of electronic tickets for the airline. Aeroflot later refused to cooperate with Assist.

As a result, according to the materials of the criminal case, both companies - both Aeroflot and Assist - suffered losses in the amount of more than 1 million rubles.

2010: Registry hack and Chronopay domain "hijacking"

On December 27, 2010, Chronopay announced that a user database had been hacked. Attackers gained access to the data of customers who used the system in 2009-2010, including the numbers and cvv codes of their plastic cards. Yesterday, in one of the blogs (user chronofail), a link was given to a file with the numbers of several credit cards - as a sample^[4].

It is extremely difficult to verify the authenticity of the Chronopay database published on the Internet. Approximately 800 entries in hacker-posted files are not too strong evidence of hacking, says an employee of one of the structures involved in information security on the Internet. But if the base is still genuine, the financial security of Chronopay users is in question. After all, no one guarantees that the leak will not happen again.

At 10.00, Chronopay sites in.com and.ru domain zones were disabled at the request of the owner, the payment system said.

Chronopay CEO Pavel Vrublevsky denies that the base was hacked. According to him, "the domain was stolen," that is, someone got unauthorized access to the site by stealing the password from the registrar (American Directnic). His representatives did not respond to Vedomosti's request. About three weeks ago, the Directnic database was hacked, the attackers gained access to information that allows them to manage a number of sites, including Chronopay, Group-IB took part in the investigation of this incident, says its CEO Ilya Sachkov. He is sure that only the Chronopay "showcase" suffered - the processing remained unharmed, there was also no leakage of personal data. Hackers could only gain access to credit card data if customers today used Chronopay services an hour and a half from the moment of hacking until the sites were turned off, Sachkov says.

Internet payments through Chronopay are made by many companies: MTS, Sky Link, Megafon, Mosenergosbyt, etc. MTS on December 27, 2010 in the middle of the day suspended the reception of payments with plastic cards via the Internet (they are served by Chronopay), says the representative of the operator Irina Osadchaya. By the end of the day, payment acceptance was resumed, she notes. Mosenergosbyt did not turn off the reception of payments, says its representative. Until now, the company has been satisfied with the quality of Chronopay's service. While the fact of the leakage of personal data has not been proven, it is too early to draw conclusions, the representative of Mosenergosbyt believes.

In 2010, the company implemented a set of strategic measures aimed at preventing malfunctions in the payment service and promptly responding to emerging situations, which includes:

• 24/7/365 technical support organization. In addition to the cardholder technical support service, ChronoPay now has a customer technical support service, whose specialists promptly advise and resolve difficulties. The transition to round-the-clock technical support is due, among other things, to the need to assist not only Russian, but also international ChronoPay customers working in other time zones.

• Monitoring of equipment parameters. A continuous monitoring system has been implemented for about 100 parameters, even a slight deviation from which causes alerts. They are automatically sent as SMS messages to ChronoPay technicians.

• Ensuring the stability of services. Work is underway to create a comprehensive failover and disaster recovery cluster solution. The solution is undergoing an active testing process and will be put into operation in early 2012.

One of the results of the measures taken is a reduction in unplanned downtime, which in six months in total did not exceed 30 minutes. This indicator is a key requirement for ensuring the stability of critical processes.

Notes