The case of creation and development of Mir payment system was presented at the Management of the Future Conference held by the Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg University (GSOM SPbU). Students have learned first-hand about specific features and challenges of the project and key decisions made at different stages of project implementation from the Bank of Russia expert Alla Bakina and other financial market participants. GSOM SPbU lecturers Anastasia Golubeva and Vitaly Okulov moderated the discussion.

"Today our discussion is focused on the largest-to-date project launched in 2014 by the Bank of Russia. The project of creation and development of the national card payment system has not only significantly influenced the country's payment service market and ensured the independence and safety of the financial system of Russia but also transformed customer experience by providing numerous opportunities in the financial payment sphere. Today you have a unique chance to learn the details and nuances of project implementation from its participants. Case analysis and such meetings allow the students of the Business School to learn using the best practices," — addressed to the students Anastasia Golubeva, Academic Director of Public Administration Bachelor Program of GSOM SPbU.

"What triggered the creation of the national card payment system were highly negative events of 2014 — several million people lost the possibility to use their cards and thus access to their money," — reminded Alla Bakina, Director of the National Payment System Department of the Bank of Russia. Following the US sanctions against Russia, VISA and MasterCard blocked payments for the clients of some banks for the first time on March 21, 2014. This has shown the true vulnerability of the country's financial system. Such risks were acknowledged before, but they were thought to be unlikely to happen: the government, society and business did not support the idea to pass card transactions within the country under the Russian jurisdiction.

"The national card payment system was created within a record-breaking short period of time, ー told Alla Bakina. ー It took 7 months to build a complex infrastructure and create intracountry processing. Transactions with cards of international payment systems began to be processed within Russia in 2014. All banking institutions ー more than 400 at that point of time ー were connected to the processing. Legal framework for such relations was being developed simultaneously. The first transaction was carried out on December 15, 2015. Hardly anyone believed in the project's feasibility. The experience of other countries shows that deployment of such systems takes several years. Apart from that, all similar initiatives never got further development in Russia, as the positions of VISA and MasterCard remained strong. The project became successful thanks to such factors as the team of fellow thinkers and well-coordinated efforts of key leaders.

The society welcomed Mir with doubts: in social media it was contemptuously called a "souvenir for patriots". Governmental support measures were taken to give impetus to its promotion. However, they wouldn't have helped without the new infrastructure and appropriate marketing strategy. Eventually, NSPK JSC became profitable in the first year of work. The rapid development of the company proves the success of the project. In 2015-2020 the asset growth rate was reaching an average of 40% every year, income and net profit growth rate was 50%. This made it possible to invest into infrastructure support and new service development. "According to NSPK research, 95 percent of people heard about Mir payment system and about 75 percent use it every day. This means the company, brand and payment system are acknowledged by customers, ー shared Alla Bakina. ー NSPK was built according to the high standards of cyber security, and it has been upgraded since its appearance and continues to be improved".

«Maksim Grigoriev, FinTech Association CEO, believes that ambitiousness, large scale and complexity of the challenge required many strategic decisions (both technical and managerial) and that this guaranteed the success: "Many projects are ruined even if they are perfectly organized because strategic decisions are not made or made half-heartedly. In the case of NSPK the decisions were strong and they determined the success of the project. Study the case! There are many ideas and interesting information". The authors of the case believe that the analysis of the creation of the national payment system is a great lesson for similar future projects: it shows how each separate step and all of them together helped to reach the final goal, how flexible they were, what were the compromises and how the best possible and minimum required were balanced.

Mir is an example of a huge and rapidly developed project of transformation of the whole financial segment: from banks and retail business to private persons. Creation and launch of the national payment system was like the Soviet nuclear project for the Russian banking system. Risks and threats that occurred when the circumstances for all users of cards changed were so serious that we cannot overestimate the need for fast decisions and fast results. When we at VTB started to reflect about what examples of our experience we could share in the learning process, Mir creation seemed one of the most important cases", believes Alexei Chubar, Head of the Department of New Educational Products and Technologies Development at VTB Bank.

VTB bank is a strategic partner of the Graduate School of Management of SPbU. Being one of the largest employers, VTB helps to update the knowledge conveyed to GSOM SPbU students according to labor market demands and economic situation. The case of creation and development of Mir payment system is designed principally for lessons in economics and finance, strategic management and public administration and will be used in programs of the Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg University. It has been published in the Russian Management Journal and is available for students and faculty of all universities and business representatives, who can benefit from the experience of unique financial instrument development.

The case is the result of the field study by the GSOM SPbU professors conducted using the information provided by NSPK JSC, interviews with project managers and materials from public sources.