The article examines the changes that will be made to the legislation of the Russian Federation in connection with the introduction by the Bank of Russia of the retail model of the digital ruble (model D). The legal analysis was carried out on the basis of two concepts of the digital ruble (2020 and 2021) developed by the Bank of Russia, as well as a package of bills on amendments to the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, Federal Law No. 161-FZ of June 27, 2011 “On the National Payment System” and a number of other laws. As a result of the analysis of the retail two-tier model of the digital ruble with the role of financial institutions as settlement participants (model D), it was concluded that, according to the proposed mechanism, the Bank of Russia is forced to enter into contractual legal relations not only with credit institutions, but also directly with their clients — individuals and legal entities. It is reasonable to distinguish the levels of the banking system depending on what kind of clientele the respective bank serves. If a bank provides banking services to customers who do not have the status of a credit institution, then this is a second-tier bank. If the bank serves clients with the status of a credit institution, then this is a first-tier bank of the banking system. The introduction of Model D in the form in which it is described in the Concept of the Bank of Russia for 2021 and in the package of bills will actually erase the differences between the two levels of the banking system. 

The article (considering as an example the banking transactions, mostly bank deposit) provides for necessity to take into consideration the public interest while considering the terms and conditions of the contract as fair or unfair. According to the author, the fairness of the terms and conditions of the contract cannot be assessed just when taking into consideration of the interests of one of the parties vis-a-vis the other party to the contract — as far as the banking transaction of a dual nature, both civil law contract and banking product, the fairness is to be considered in the light of the interests of the banking system as a whole, as far as banking transaction cannot exist without such a system, therefore the contract term cannot be considered as fair if it provides for the best protection if the consumer interests but ignores the interest of the banking system. In turn, the interests of the banking system are public by its nature, and the article touches upon the fundamentals of counteractions of the private and public interests stressing the necessity to reconsider the traditional approach to the “division” between the public and private law. 

The article discusses the prerequisites for the creation of banking ecosystems. The author concludes that the main of such prerequisites are: reduction of income from traditional banking operations and banks’ desire to increase profits at the expense of non-bank income; introduction of new, including digital technologies; availability of personal customer data (big data) at banks. The advent of remote identification and customer service systems has ensured the availability of banking services and expanded the customer base. The formation of new behavioral preferences of customers through calculations and other operations provided an opportunity for credit institutions to improve their services.

The main prerequisites for the creation of banking ecosystems have caused the transformation of banking activities.

The theory offers various definitions of the concept of “banking ecosystems”, which reveal the legal nature of ecosystems in different ways, or contain one or more of its features. The author came to the conclusion that such definitions are based on institutional or instrumental features.

Based on the conducted research, the article substantiates that in Russian law, banking ecosystems are built according to the type of a banking group (holding). 

The article touches on both general theoretical and practical issues of the importance of determining the sectoral affiliation of legal norms for resolving emerging legal conflicts. As an example, the author explores the problem of interaction between Article 74 of the Law on the Bank of Russia and Articles 15.26, 15.27 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation, which often leads to arbitrariness on the part of the Mega-Regulator. Attention is drawn to the manifestation of distortions in the principle of independence of the Bank of Russia in the form of a 20-year confrontation with court decisions on disputes on bringing credit institutions to responsibility. The resolution of contradictions between legal norms is proposed to be carried out on the basis of the constitutionally enshrined principle of legal equality, the guarantee of which is the codification of provisions on public liability. The correlation of financial and administrative law in the regulation of banking activity is analyzed and the absence of any features for the assertion of the existence of financial and legal responsibility is revealed. The author comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to exclude compositions providing for administrative liability for violation of banking legislation from any legislative acts, except the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation, in order to ensure consistent and predictable legal regulation. 

The article discusses the regulation for new type of financial operations — partner financing (Islamic banking), and for the organizations providing such operations. Particular attention is paid to the implementation of the experimental legal regime (ELR) and the prospects for the future widespread implementation of appropriate regulation. Under ELR such operations can be carried out by both financial and non-financial companies. The legal requirements are compliance with the rules established by law, inclusion in the special register of the Bank of Russia and supervision by the regulator. One of the basic principles of Islamic finance is the risk sharing between investor and financial institution. For this reason, classical contractual interestbearing instruments (loans, credits and deposits) are unsuitable to impose the obligations on them. The novelty factor for the Russian financial market of partner, non-interest-bearing financial products (services) makes them potentially less understandable for investors and regulators in matters of pricing, valuation, and asset quality. 

The article attempts to correlate the anti-sanction regulation of the banking services market and the anti-crisis legal regime of banking. The author distinguishes between the sanctions regime and the anti-sanction legal regime that frames the anti-sanction regulation of the relevant market and is part of its anti-crisis regulation. The article substantiates that the antisanctions legal regime does not include means of counter-sanctions, since the latter do not aim to mitigate the sanctions regime for the relevant market, but are retaliatory restrictive measures that often also negatively affect the activities of national market participants. Therefore, the author distinguishes between the sanctions legal regime and the counter-sanctions legal regime, coming to the conclusion that the legislator is inconsistent in this matter. The article concludes that the anti-crisis regulation of the banking services market can also be considered as an anti-crisis legal regime of banking activity, an integral part of which is also an anti-sanction legal regime or anti-sanction regulation, the means of which are aimed at overcoming the consequences of the sanctions regime. At the same time, unlike the sanctions regime or the counter-sanction regime, which are a special or extraordinary regime, the anti-sanction regime is a special legal regime, since it is only a type of anti-crisis regulation of the relevant market. 

The sustainable Development agenda has long been a stable trend in the global economy. Russia has been included in this global theme for a long time. Legislation, regulations and recommendation documents were being developed in the country, special tools were being created, primarily in the banking sector. At the same time, the CODID-19 pandemic and the wave of sanctions pressure that

followed it raised the question of the expediency of further development of the ESG agenda in Russia. The article discusses the features of the legal regulation of ESG banking under the conditions of sanctions pressure. It is noted that the sustainable development agenda remains relevant in Russia, but is currently focused more on solving internal problems. The most important areas of ESG banking are: the development of universal terminology and a system of legal categories, taxonomy, ESG reporting, ratings, features of accounting for ESG factors in lending and financing procedures, as well as corporate governance and compliance control.

Proposals are formulated to improve the regulatory and legal regulation of ESG banking in Russia. 

The focus of this article is the currency restrictions imposed by the Russian Federation on resident individuals in response to the deployment by foreign states and their unions of a policy of sanctions pressure on the national banking system. First, the authors identify regulatory windows and types of country sanctions: freezing of reserves and assets of the Bank of Russia, a ban for the Bank of Russia on access to the capital market and a ban on the sale, supply, transfer or export of cash euros and US dollars to Russia. Further, the domestic legal order is analyzed in terms of the introduction and operation of currency restrictions that apply to resident individuals. It is revealed that the main restrictions consisted in the forced conversion of part of foreign currency deposits, prohibitions on crediting currency to foreign accounts and providing loans to non-residents, setting thresholds for crossborder transfer of non-cash and cash funds; prohibition of electronic money transfers with the help of foreign payment service providers and transactions with persons of foreign states committing unfriendly acts or included in the sanctions list by the Government of the Russian Federation. The legality of the establishment of these currency restrictions and the practice of their application are investigated. Based on the results of the analysis, ways to improve domestic legislation are proposed. 

After Apple suspended the use of the Apple Pay application for bank cards of international payment systems Visa and Mastercard for residents of Russia in March 2022 and Google (Google Pay) and Samsung (Samsung Pay) followed suit, settlements by QR-codes became a real alternative for making payments using smartphones. The article discusses the technical and legal aspects of making payments using QR-codes. The author showed, that payment using a QR-code is not a form of non-cash payments. By its legal nature, a QR-code is a machine-readable form of submitting a payment order to pay a certain amount of funds by the payer to their recipient, using the recipient’s details, «encrypted» in this code. Therefore, payment by QR-code is carried out as part of payments by payment orders. 

The article is devoted to the consideration of the procedure for using payment (bank) cards when transferring funds. It is indicated that at present scientific and technological progress has led to the acceleration and improvement of settlement mechanisms, the introduction of new and optimization of already provided banking services in general. Payment (bank) cards are very popular. In the course of the study, the features characteristic of bank transfer by means of payment (bank) cards were identified. The study of the practice of using payment (bank) cards has shown that the gaps and inaccuracies existing in Russian legislation lead to an increase in the number of disputes involving citizens — cardholders. In order to avoid business risks, banks fix in their local acts a ban on the holder to transfer a payment (bank) card, as well as details, codes and passwords to it to a third party. In this regard, the article emphasizes the importance of familiarizing citizens — holders of payment (bank) cards with local acts of banks in order to ensure security when using cards and prevent unauthorized transfers. 

The author discusses the problems related the transformation of the theory of civil law in the situation of subjects and objects. It is noted that there is one fundamental question that can be divided into separate sub-questions. The question is if it is necessary to expand the legally established list of subjects/objects. Can new digital relationships be explained according to classical constructions? In order to solve these problems, the author proposes a “test on the principles of civil law”. It can be a theoretical and practical basis for solving the issue of changing fundamental approaches to the subject, object, subjective rights, legal facts in the conditions of digitalization of society. According to this approach the “test on the principles of civil law” is a thought experiment, which consists in presenting how the principles of civil law will be interpreted with a significant transformation of the fundamental categories of civil law in connection with the digitalization of society. 

The article deals with the key problems of protection of intellectual property and the results of intellectual activity in the context of the rapid development of digital technologies. The key factor influencing the development of intellectual property rights in modern conditions is the transparency of relations in the digital environment, the absence of actual borders within the global digital space, the mixing of various branches of knowledge, science and technology.

The author believes that rethinking the role of robots in public life poses the task of a humane approach to the legal regulation of the use of AI. Objectively, there is a need to resolve the issue of introducing responsibility for the action of AI, its legal justification and consolidation. The author also believes that the legal personality of AI will be built by analogy with the legal personality of legal entities, currently it is sufficient to amend the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. This, at the current stage of the application of artificial intelligence, will allow us to determine the basic principles and legal regulation of this sphere. 

In the article the analysis of stages of development of citizens digital profiling in Russia is carried out. Based on the analysis the authors draw the conclusions on forming of legal mechanism according to principles in reliance on main functions of state. In particular, social function stipulates that categorization of citizens is allowed only for estimation of need in material assistance, supplementary guarantees and favours. Economical function includes execution of financial control and monitoring, stimulation of economical activity of citizens. Law enforcement function is focused on prevention and early recognition of legal wrongs including in digital sphere. Human rights function is realized in actions to stem violations of rights and legitimate interests including electoral. An idea of commercialization of digital profiling, its perception as a product aimed to risk minimization during rendering of financial and other services poses a danger of discrimination of citizens and criminalization of this sphere. 

The article is devoted to the analysis of the legal norms governing the accrual of interest on the account balance of an individual, and the existence of legal grounds for changing the amount of accrued interest on the account balance. When concluding contracts for the opening of popular so-called “savings” accounts, neither the client nor the bank have legal protection in terms of regulating changes in the amount of interest accrued on the account balance of an individual. Legal norms do not provide for the possibility of unilaterally changing the amount of interest accrued on the account balance both upwards and downwards, which encourages banks to initially set the amount of interest accrued on the account balance at a minimum level, or to include a condition on non-deduction of interest on the account balance. The analysis of the norms of legislation and practice made it possible to identify the problem that arises when credit institutions need to change the amount of interest accrued on the balance on the account of an individual, which is especially characteristic when working with the so-called “accumulative” account and come to the conclusion that it is necessary to improve the norms of current legislation in order to develop non-cash payments and competition, as well as uniformity in application of the norms of legislation and protection of the rights of consumers of financial services — individuals. 

System analysis is necessary to establish the boundaries of the law of money circulation and describe the mechanism of its functioning. The concept of the monetary system, which is an integral category reflecting the structure of monetary circulation, allows establishing systemic links between the institutions of money circulation. The elements of the monetary system accurately describe the composition, boundaries and nature of the internal relations of social relations related to the subject matter of the law of monetary circulation. The institutions of the law of money circulation underlie the relations that make up the content of credit money and mediate their emission, as well as relations for the organization and regulation of money circulation, the need for which is due to the fiat nature of money. The institutions of the law of monetary circulation have different industry affiliations, but there is a close functional relationship between them, due to the unity of purpose and the distribution of tasks within the mechanism of monetary circulation. The legal regulation of the circulation of modern money has a private law and public law basis. Interaction between institutions is implemented within the framework of complex legal relations. 

The issue of the legal personality of credit organizations has been studied by the authors for a long time, but there is still no full-fledged judgment on it. What type of legal personality is characteristic of credit organizations — in modern science is an acute issue. Today there are different opinions on this issue. Modern science has long advanced from the primitive division of the legal personality of all legal entities into general and special. The authors identify different types of legal personality of credit organizations — mixed, exclusive, general, partially limited general, special, partially limited general, etc. However, the arguments given by the authors in favor of their position are refuted by other equally convincing arguments. This article analyzes all currently known types of legal personality inherent in credit organizations, and puts forward a new author’s concept of solving the problem.