Tinkoff Credit System, a Russian online banking platform similar to Simple, announced on its official Twitter feed that it will begin providing bitcoin deposit functionality on January, 19. Later, the bank denied its authorship, claiming that the they had already moved to another Twitter account by the time the tweet was posted.

The tweet on @tcsbank read: “Tinkoff Credit Systems Bank is the first in Russia to open deposits in bitcoins on January 19. Details tomorrow on tinkoff.ru”. The announcement was retweeted by the Crypto Currencies Foundation Russia, who invited Oleg Tinkov to comment on the announcement. The @tcsbank account was soon deleted.

The Tinkoff Bank, founded by Oleg Tinkov in 2006, is the first bank in Russia to have no brick-and-mortar branches or ATMs, operating entirely via online and mobile services. It is one of the top three credit cards issuers on the Russian market. The bank provides online retail financial services including deposits and online insurance services. Oleg Tinkov has been recognised as one of the country’s most extravagant entrepreneurs by the Russian edition of Forbes. He used to own a professional Italy-based cycling team and published a biographical account of his career in business with an introduction by Richard Branson.

In reply to the message from CCF Russia, @tinkoff_bank confirmed that the bank had nothing to do with the announcement since they had already set up a new account by the time of its appearance. At present, the @tcsbank account has been restored and contains a single tweet redirecting users to the bank’s new account. Tinkoff Credit Systems is currently in the middle of a transition to its new name, Tinkoff Bank, which includes the new web domain tinkoff.ru as well as a new Twitter handle. CCF Russia repeated their invitation to comment, clarifying that they hoped the bank’s experts could speak at the organisation’s “unique event” – presumably, during the Coin Fest Russia