German Gref, the head of Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia, recently said that an alternative to Bitcoin could appear in the country soon.

The Yandex Money payment system could possibly serve as the basis for the new virtual money project, Voice of Russia reports.

"There is much talk about it now. One day before Sberbank unveiled its project, JP Morgan said that it had plans to create its own crypto-currency. However, it is hard to say at the moment whether this idea will be realized," Veronika Chekina, an analyst with Infina, said, according to Voice of Russia.

Experts say the advantage of the virtual money is that transparent schemes will be used for the introduction of so-called web cash.

"There are two things that Sberbank can do; first, it can sponsor the introduction of the new segment after it publishes the protocol. Secondly, it can exchange the new currency for the existing Russian currency, the ruble. If the first option seems to be daring, the second, to exchange a virtual currency for Russian rubles, seems to be real. Why not? It is a very interesting market, and this could prove beneficial for Sberbank as well," Voice of Russia reports.