Private user-to-user (C2C) sales in Russian messengers and social networks reached RUB591bn ($9bn) through March 2018, with an average receipt of RUB1,500, Vedomosti said on November 23 citing the data of Yandex.Kassa and Data Insight.

The turnover of such sales is comparable to RUB1.04 trillion of official e-commerce in 2017. The main product segment of such peer-to-peer sales was apparel and footwear.

As of January 2019 the Russian government started an experiment with new self-employed fiscal status in Moscow, the Moscow and Kaluga regions and Tatarstan, cutting the income tax to 4-6% and introducing a billing app that would automatically transfer the tax. 

The initiative is aimed at increasing the tax revenues from "social" e-commerce, with the Federal Tax Service eyeing integration with large platforms such as Yandex.Taxi, YouDo, Profi, Yula, and Airbnb.

The biggest sales channels according to the study are Avito and Yula online classifieds portals, followed by social networks VKontakte, Instagram, and Odnoklassniki, as well as sharing economy platforms such as YouDo, Profi, and others. 

About 6% of "social" e-commerce is done in messengers, such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Viber. Over half of the sales overall are of second-hand goods, with 12% of the sellers seeing revenues from such sales as substantial. 

Avito estimates that in the past 12 months about RUB1.27 trillion of goods and services were sold on the platform, about 1% of forecasted 2018 GDP. Out of that, sales by private individuals amount to RUB380bn, up from RUB300bn in 2017.