One of the largest money transfer systems, Unistream, complained to the Central Bank against its rival, The Golden Crown. In a letter to the regulator, Unistream reported that the Golden Crown undermined his business reputation (Vedomosti had read the document, two people close to the parties to the dispute confirmed that such a letter had been sent to the Central Bank).

"Unistream" writes that the "Golden Crown" at the end of May sent letters to its partners. They tried to create the impression of Unistream's "instability and unreliability", drawing an analogy with the "Leader" system, from the settlement center of which the Central Bank revoked the license, the letter said. "Unistream" believes that this was done intentionally - to form a negative opinion about the payment system.

"Unistream" decided to apply to the Central Bank, due to the fact that after the letters of the "Golden Crown", which spoke of the poor financial situation of the payment system, the company's partners began to handle questions, says a person close to Unistream. In its complaint, the payment system cited an example of such a letter from the manager of the Golden Crown. In it, as the latest news of the market, links to open sources of information referring to Unistream are cited. A person close to the "Golden Crown" confirmed that an employee with that name and surname, like the sender of the letter, does work in the payment system. But, he said, the reasons for sending such a letter are not known and, perhaps, it was a personal initiative of the employee. The representative of the "Golden Crown" refused to comment on this.

Due to the distribution of the competitor, Unistream faced an outflow, the company said and asked the Central Bank to check whether the Golden Crown participated in ordering negative articles about the payment system and take action.

From the accounts of the bank "Unistream" (the settlement center of the system) it follows that in May the legal entity withdrew about 150 million rubles from accounts. In the II quarter, "Unistream" decreased the attracted funds of banks by 17%, says expert "Expert RA" Ruslan Korshunov, but there were more outflows. The bank has a good supply of highly liquid assets, which allows to fully cover possible outflows of attracted customer funds, Korshunov said. At the same time, the capital of the credit institution has grown to more than 1 billion rubles, he continues, and the bank will be able to apply for a "universal" license (banks with a capital of less than 1 billion rubles can only get a basic license that involves a number of restrictions on currency settlements. - Vedomosti), which will allow Unistream to carry out key operations for its business.

The representative of "Unistream" declined to comment, the representative of the Central Bank did not respond to the request. In response to Vedomosti's questions about whether Zolotaya Korona has an attitude towards the information attack on its competitor, its representative said that the system is not involved in the mentioned publications about Unistream. Letters from Unistream to the Golden Crown have not been received, and the company has not commented on the communication with the Central Bank, he said.

Now the spread of negative information has stopped, says a person close to Unistream. Tighter regulation of the translation market, which has already led to a revocation in 2017-2018. licenses from several notable market participants (Intercoopbank, "Leader", "Anelik"), strengthened competition between the largest players in the money transfer market, Korshunov said.

The "Golden Crown" takes the first place in the Russian money transfer market. Customers in 2017, according to the system, sent with its help 735 billion rubles. "Unistream" is one of the three leaders, the "Expert RA" report says. According to Unistream, in 2017 about 242 billion rubles were sent through it.