Alfa-Bank has announced the abolition of VAT on payments made through Alfa Pay service. The change is valid for customers who have Internet acquiring enabled, and is announced for all business segments.
The decision looks like a response to the 2026 tax overhaul. Since January 1, 2026, bank card servicing operations and a number of related services, including acquiring and processing, have been subject to VAT, which has raised the cost of accepting non-cash payments for some companies. Against this background, banks and payment providers choose different models: some add VAT on top of the fees, others take the burden on themselves and redistribute it within the tariffs.
Alfa Pay is used in the description of the bank as a payment method for online purchases and as part of the payment infrastructure of online commerce. The service provides support for regular payments and subscriptions, as well as account replenishment on the payment page. If the abolition of VAT through this channel becomes established in the practice of connection, for merchants this means a more transparent calculation of the unit economy: the commission for accepting payments stops "jumping" due to the tax at this point.
Three practical things are important for business.
- Finance. Acquiring affects margins in e-commerce, especially in categories with high returns and thin margins.
- Contracts and accounting. When changing the procedure for taxation of services, it is important to correctly reflect the tariffs and the primary one, so as not to catch discrepancies in accounting.
- Conversion rate. Banks associate Alfa Pay with speeding up payment processing and conversion to payment, and reducing the "cost of payment" for the merchant increases interest in enabling fast scenarios.
In short: the acquiring market in 2026 is living in a tax reconfiguration mode, and the move with Alfa Pay shows that banks have begun to compete for merchants with point-to-point solutions for the cost of accepting payments.
