Sberbank of Russia

04/16/2021 | Press release | Archived content

Russians buy gadgets and gain knowledge with Sber’s POS lending solution

SberBank has analyzed what Russians bought via Buy with Sber in 1Q21. The service lets you buy in installments after taking out a loan online.

The service was mostly used to buy gadgets. The top 5 are the following smartphones: the Samsung Galaxy S21, Samsung Galaxy S20, Apple iPhone 11, Apple iPhone 12, and Samsung Galaxy Note 20. These are followed by the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3, two more Samsung smartphones, the Galaxy A12 and A52, the Huawei Matebook D 16 laptop, and the Samsung Galaxy A51, which closes the top 10. This proves that products in the Electronics category still maintain their leading positions on the online lending market. This is largely due to the short life cycle of goods amid the ongoing digital revolution.

Some of the biggest sales were seen in Kukhni Mariya, a furniture store, and on netology.ru, a website with online courses, reaching RUB 1 mln and RUB 950,000 respectively. High AOVs are typical for furniture stores, while the education industry definitely benefitted from telework. Since the beginning of the pandemic, this category has registered an increase in loans. Netology websites selling online courses saw the number of 1Q21 purchases on credit through Buy with Sber up 251% y-o-y.

The 'heaviest' shopping cart was registered at Petrovich, a building materials shop, where a customer bought 573 items on credit. The high demand for construction materials is mainly due to the real estate market boom that was triggered by lower mortgage rates thanks to the state support program.

Here are the average metrics among customers using Buy with Sber: age (36), AOV (53,500 rubles), lending term (19 months), gender (46% of men, 54% of women).

The regions of Russia with the biggest number of applications are Moscow and Moscow Region, St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region, Rostov Region, Samara Region, and Sverdlovsk Region. The results are due to the specific nature of online lending and are directly related to customer behavior with regards to online services and online shopping, which are quite popular.

We see the POS lending market changing its course amid the pandemic. Online services, including education, are much more popular now. Buy with Sber is aligned with the general trend due to a fully paperless and remote lending system. Thanks to that you can use the service and buy on credit online, end to end. Over 90% of our partners sell on credit, letting customers buy without facing extra costs due to partner discounts fully balancing the interest on your loan.

Sergei Shirokov, Director of Borrow and Save, SberBank

Buy with Sber is a lending service that brings together customers and stores when buying on loan. At the moment, the platform has over 15,000 offline and online partners, including Samsung, re:Store, Huawei, Acer, Honor, Lazurit, Asus and many others.