Russia Federal Law No. 45-FZ: Digital Rights for Cross-Border Settlements

The core amendments permit digital financial assets and utility digital rights to serve as consideration under contracts between a Russian currency-law resident and a nonresident. The contract must concern the transfer of goods, performance of work, provision of services, supply of information, or transfer of intellectual-property results, including exclusive rights. The same formulation was added to the digital-financial-assets law and the investment-platform law.

This structure matters because “digital financial asset” is a defined Russian legal category rather than a generic synonym for cryptoasset. Utility digital rights are likewise platform-based claims, such as rights to demand delivery of goods, intellectual-property rights or use rights, work, or services. The authorization therefore attaches to the statutory instrument and the qualifying foreign-trade contract, not merely to the use of distributed-ledger technology.

Federal Law No. 45-FZ brings digital rights expressly into Russia’s currency-regulation framework. Certain digital rights linked to foreign-currency monetary claims or foreign securities are treated as currency valuables; other specified digital rights are not. Currency operations involving digital rights must occur in the relevant digital-financial-asset information systems or investment platforms.

The Bank of Russia may, with the designated federal authority, prohibit particular categories of currency operations involving the acquisition or disposal of digital rights or impose conditions on them. The currency-law amendment also states that resident–nonresident use of digital rights as payment is available only under the qualifying foreign-trade contracts described by the statute. These provisions make the settlement permission conditional and supervised rather than unrestricted.

The law adds transfers of utility digital rights, digital financial assets, and hybrid rights used as foreign-trade consideration to the list of transactions subject to mandatory control under Federal Law No. 115-FZ. The Bank of Russia’s March 2024 AML review describes this control as a direct consequence of permitting those instruments in cross-border contracts.

Federal Law No. 45-FZ also authorizes the Bank of Russia to request information about the beneficial owner of a digital-financial-asset issuer from the issuer or the operator of the issuing information system. Both must provide the requested information. These provisions connect the settlement channel to financial-monitoring and ownership-transparency mechanisms.

The State Duma adopted the law on February 27, 2024, the Federation Council approved it on March 6, and the president signed it on March 11. Most provisions took effect upon official publication that day. Selected, largely financial-platform provisions took effect on April 11, 2024, while a deferred customer-identification provision took effect on January 1, 2025.

As of June 22, 2026, the cross-border digital-rights rules remain in the consolidated statutes. A government package—Bills No. 1194918-8 and 1194929-8—would reorganize Russia’s digital-currency and digital-rights framework and remains under State Duma consideration after first reading. Because that proposal is not enacted, it does not change this profile’s current “In force” status, but it warrants near-term monitoring. This profile describes the legislation and does not provide legal or compliance advice.