On Tuesday 13 October a headline spread through Russian news aggregators and climbed Google Trends: «Центробанк обратился ко всем, у кого есть наличные деньги» ("The Central Bank has addressed everyone who holds cash"). The wording suggests a new warning from the Bank of Russia. There is none. The Bank of Russia's news feed for 12–13 October contains an interview about the digital ruble and an announcement of financial literacy classes for older people. No press release, regulation or statement on cash was published on either day.
What the articles actually repackage is older material: a Bank of Russia survey published in late September, comments by Governor Elvira Nabiullina from June and September, and the regulator's own cash statistics. Those facts are real, and more interesting than the headline.
Where the headline comes from
The version that circulated on 13 October, published at 01:34 local time by a regional outlet, rests on two items. The first is the Bank of Russia's monthly household survey, run by the polling agency inFOM. The second is Nabiullina's remark that the share of cash in the money supply had risen "insignificantly". The article itself ends with the line that the rise in cash "does not mean the Central Bank is calling on Russians to abandon bank accounts". The body of the piece contradicts its own headline.
It also gets the key number backwards. It says 38% of Russians prefer a bank account and 37% prefer cash. The Bank of Russia's own September 2026 report shows the opposite.
What the Bank of Russia's survey shows
The question is: in what form is it better to keep savings now, in a bank account or deposit, or in cash, including a safe deposit box? In September 2026, 38% of all respondents chose cash and 37% chose a bank account. A further 10% chose a mix, 6% another form and 10% could not answer. A year earlier, in September 2025, the split was 43% for the bank and 32% for cash.
August was the turning point: 37% for cash against 36% for the bank. The Moscow Times noted that this was the first time since 2022 that cash came out on top. September confirmed it rather than reversing it.
This is a survey of opinions, not of balances. It says what people think is safer or more convenient, not how much money has moved.
What the cash statistics show
The money has moved too. According to the Bank of Russia's monetary base data, cash in circulation outside the Bank of Russia stood at 22.23 trillion rubles on 1 October 2026. That is 2.78 trillion more than on 1 January (19.45 trillion), a rise of 14.3% in nine months, and 3.84 trillion, or 20.9%, more than a year earlier. Between October 2023 and October 2025 the figure barely moved.
The monthly pace is uneven. Cash grew by about 618 billion rubles in July, 356 billion in August and 348 billion in September. On 9 October the Bank of Russia said that growth in September had slowed compared with previous months, while growth for January–September was still above the same periods of 2024 and 2025.
The regulator expects more. Its draft monetary policy guidelines, published at the end of August, projected that cash in circulation would rise by 3.7 trillion rubles in 2026, 2 trillion in 2027 and 1.6 trillion in 2028. The liquidity forecast in its October commentary puts the 2026 increase at 3.4–4.0 trillion rubles.
How the Bank of Russia explains it
Nabiullina has addressed the topic three times since June. At the press conference on 11 September she said people paid in cash more often in the second quarter, and named a combination of reasons: mobile internet outages, adaptation to tax changes and anxiety caused by various rumours. From 2026 the VAT rate rose to 22% from 20%, and the revenue threshold for paying it fell to 20 million rubles from 60 million.
Her second argument is about deposit rates. In 2024–2025 deposit rates were very high, so cash grew much more slowly; what is happening now is "catch-up dynamics", she said. By mid-August the average maximum deposit rate at the ten largest retail banks was 12.9%, according to Bank of Russia data cited by The Moscow Times.
The third argument is proportion. Cash is now about 15% of the money supply, against about 20% five years ago, and the Bank of Russia's October commentary says this year's small increase "in no way contradicts the long-term trend" towards a lower share. At the International Banking Forum on 24 September Nabiullina said: "We see the increase in demand for cash, but we have to look at the economy as a whole."
What actually changed for cash holders
Three things are real, and none of them is a restriction on keeping cash at home.
Banks were told to accept cash. On 23 September Deputy Governor Sergei Belov said some banks were refusing to take cash from customers, treating cash operations as a right rather than an obligation. "From our point of view, this interpretation is fundamentally wrong," he said, citing Article 140 of the Civil Code: the ruble is legal tender that must be accepted at face value throughout Russia.
Large cash deposits get more scrutiny. On 24 September Bogdan Shablya, head of the Bank of Russia's financial monitoring and currency control service, said compliance must be stronger in business segments that use a lot of cash, and that a new, "very large and detailed" recommendation to banks was coming. He stressed that the regulator has never opposed cash as such, only cash of unidentified origin.
Deposits through other banks' ATMs. From 1 October banks may let customers deposit cash into their own account through another bank's ATM via the Faster Payments System. Limits are 25,000 rubles per operation, 50,000 a day and 200,000 a month, the fee is set by each bank, and joining is voluntary for banks.
Foreign currency cash and the digital ruble
For dollar and euro savers nothing new happened in October. At the start of September the Bank of Russia extended its restrictions on foreign currency cash for six months, to 9 March 2027, citing sanctions that bar Russian banks from buying Western cash currency. Holders of accounts opened before 9 March 2022 can still withdraw up to $10,000 or the euro equivalent once; the rest is paid out in rubles.
The digital ruble entered general circulation on 1 September. In the interview published on 12 October, Deputy Governor Zulfiya Kakhrumanova said more than 220,000 accounts had been opened, about 10,000 of them by companies, with more than 150,000 operations. Transfers for individuals are free; a digital ruble account can be opened only by the owner, from their own device. Offline payment, the feature most relevant to people who hold cash for outages, does not exist yet: a prototype is due to be tested with a small group of users.
What does not change
No document announces a ban on cash, a limit on cash at home, a withdrawal of current banknotes or compulsory conversion into digital rubles. The ruble in all three forms is worth the same, and Belov's statement points the other way: banks are being told to take cash, not refuse it.
In analyst Ruslan Averin's view, the real story is the 38% versus 37% in the survey and the 22.23 trillion rubles in circulation: after two years in which high deposit rates pulled money into banks, a meaningful part of Russian savings is moving back under the mattress, and the regulator is describing that shift rather than fighting it. For savers, the cost is simple to state. Cash earns nothing, while deposits still pay double-digit rates.
Related: Russia's OFZ bonds and the retail push, the ECB's central bank money settlement plan and where Ukrainians hold savings with the hryvnia at 44.76.