updatedJuly 6, 2022 at 2:17 p.m
A reader wanted to order clothes from H&M and discovered that the company wanted to funnel its money through Russia. That is very irritating and morally questionable, say two experts.
Yookassa.ru is one of the largest online payment processors in Russia. The company is on the US sanctions list. In Switzerland, however, the use of Yookassa is still permitted.
REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
The fact that H&M relies on a Russian partner for payments is an absolute no-go in the current situation, says a 20-minute reader who noticed the cooperation with Yookassa.
20min/Celia Nogler
“I wanted to order something from H&M’s web shop when I noticed when paying that they were using a Russian payment service provider” – with these words, reader X.* contacted the editors. He then canceled the purchase. Because H&M cooperates with Yookassa from Russia to process payments.
“Processing payments from Switzerland via Russia is generally questionable,” says the reader in an interview with the editors. ‘But in the current situation it’s an absolute no-go!”
Russian code at H&M
The IT expert Marc Ruef, who is co-owner of the IT security company Scip, confirms this information: A script on the H&M website calls up the payment service provider Yookassa.ru, says Ruef. Yookassa is one of the largest online payment providers in Russia. The company belongs to the Russian Sberbank.
According to Ruef, the website only calls up the code written in the JavaScript programming language when you click on “Checkout” in the shopping cart and start the checkout. The data is communicated via Saint Petersburg. “It doesn’t appear as if you could complete the purchase without this access,” says the IT expert.
Morally questionable
There are many providers like Yookassa. The company Stripe is known worldwide, in Switzerland, for example, there is Datatrans. They differ mainly in terms of payment options and pricing. According to Ruef, it is not clear to him why H&M chose Yookassa of all things.
“The integration of external scripts always collides with the need for privacy,” warns Ruef. Ideally, no or as little data as possible would be transmitted. Even if H&M did not violate any sanctions (see box), the question arises as to whether choosing Yookassa as a partner can be morally justified, says Ruef.
So does Putin know what Swiss customers are buying from H&M? “If Putin wants to know, he’ll find out,” says Ruef. The Russian intelligence services would probably have access to this data.
Russia could now even block payments at H&M. The company would then have to switch to another payment service provider. This is “not that easy technologically” and would probably take “at least a week,” says Ruef.
“It’s pretty embarrassing”
A Russian payment service provider earns money with transaction fees when Swiss people shop at H&M. That is very irritating, says Oliver Classen from the organization Public Eye, which advocates fair globalization.
After the outbreak of the Ukraine war, H&M first attracted attention because the company quickly closed its branches in the country. That’s why it’s all the more strange to learn that H&M’s Swiss web shop is linked to a Russian financial service provider.
He does not accuse H&M of bad intentions. The company must now explain why it made this choice. Because the customers would have expected something else. “It’s pretty embarrassing,” says Classen.
The editors asked H&M several times for an opinion. The company did not respond to our inquiries.
*Name known to editors.