How to get a Russian MIR bank card before your trip (from abroad)

Irena

Hi everyone!
I’ve just published a step-by-step guide on how I managed to get a MIR card from YooMoney without being in Russia and without a Russian phone number.

Spoiler: yes, it’s possible to do everything remotely with your passport and a selfie. The real challenge is topping up the card in rubles from outside Russia, since YooMoney doesn’t accept international cards.

In this article, I explain exactly how I did it from Spain, which exchanger I used to fund it, how long the card took to arrive, and what to expect from the process:

👉 How to Get a MIR Bank Card Before Traveling to Russia

If anyone else has tried this or is in the process, feel free to join the discussion — let’s share tips and experiences 🙌

KO______

I tried to get a T-bank card back in March at the LED airport, no Russian number needed, but my UK number didn't get any of their text messages. I might consider this option before my next visit.

Irena

KO______ SMS messages from YooMoney work fine

KO______

Sounds good, I'll give it a try later and let you know.

SeanFarley1964

Hi, I managed to create the Ю Money account and a Volet account. However its impossible to add funds to the Volet account as they refuse the verification process for UK citizens. I got this message:

Please note that due to changes in crypto asset legislation in the UK, we will temporarily not be accepting new verification applications from UK users starting Oct 8th 2023.

Unfortunately the UK government being extremely russophobic make life for its own citizens very difficult

phoebe

Volet has been unavailable to UK nationals for at least a year

swede28

I will add that it is actually possible to transfer from Bybit with USDT at a good exchange.

I selected Mir card as my payment option, and then found and advertisement that made it clear they transferred through bank number and not SBP, which you need a Russian number for. I was able to get a pretty good exchange rate, 1 USD = 80 RUB.

Another option as someone mentioned is get Revolut, get a visa (I was only able to get Mastercard, but after talking to support I could get a Visa) and to it up with your normal card. Then you can use the visa card on the Yoo money website to buy rubles for around 1 USD = 72 RUB, decent exchange, but still bad.

So bybit can definitely be used like this fairly easily. And topping it up with a visa is a really good option in an emergency where you don’t have time or battery to do P2P.

Irena

swede28 Thanks for sharing your tip. Could you please let me know which advertiser on Bybit lets you transfer to a Mir card (Yoomoney) without needing a Russian phone number? I’ve been looking but haven’t been able to find any.

Many thanks in advance!

swede28

Irena
I’ve found a few that does it, generally I found that choosing “Bank transfer (Ru)” as payment option gets the best result, then read the description.

I can list 3 advertisers I’ve found if you want

swede28

swede28 Some explicitly say they only transfer by Bank number, this is the ones you want. If they say they need a number, you can mutually cancel it through appeal, it doesn’t affect your reputation. The rate is worse than through SBP, so I mostly send to my girlfriend who in turn sends to me.

Some list their telegram aswell, you can ask them there if they do by bank transfer through card number.

w1ldflower1

swede28 Hejsan, kan du vänligen dela namnen? Jag har aldrig köpt krypto.

crg_root

I used a virtual YooMoney MIR card, enrolled in Mir Pay app from Ru Store. I used then SberBank ATMs to deposit rubles in my YooMoney account, and then the phone to pay almost everywhere (through MirPay), which was way better then relying just on cash.

For some reason YooMoney Pay didn't work on my phone before my trip to Russia, but it worked just fine there.

Irena

crg_root Thanks a lot for sharing your experience, it’s super helpful!

By the way, are you using an Android or an iPhone? What is the procedure you have followed? Thanks!

crg_root

Irena Sorry for the late reply 🙁.

I'm using an Android Phone (Samsung). YooMoney was available Samsung Store. For Mir Pay I had to install Ru Store.
I followed kind of the same steps from your recent article: https://russiable.com/mir-pay-russia-mobile-payment/

For depositing Rubles from SberBank ATMs I could use the Mir Pay with the YooMoney MIR card enrolled (I tried ATMs from Moscow and St Petersburg branches), as you could perform operations by taping the phone / card (they didn't require the physical card to be inserted).

Irena

crg_root Thank you very much

AnnaZ

Hello all, this is my first post. I am a British person who has been living as a temporary resident in Belarus for almost a year, and I am about to move to Russia (I have a temporary permit as part of the Shared Values Visa scheme). Of course, just like everyone else, my primary problem is getting money into the country.
I have two main questions:
i) I work for a Chinese company in Nanjing, and currently get paid to my PayPal. This is obviously far from ideal. Does anyone know of a Russian bank which can receive money from Bank of China (my company's bank) so I can receive my earnings in Russia?
ii) If I obtain a YooMoney MIR card, will I be able to use that to get cash out of Russian ATMs? I will need cash rather than the ability to make phone payments.
I have just noted the article posted by one of your contributors about the crackdown on P2P/crypto manoeuvres, so will be avoiding that method.

FrankW

Hey @all,

after several attempts I also managed to create an account at YooMoney, even though it was quite a struggle as I always received the error message, that the connection would be lost on all of my devices. Don't know why, but in the end it worked out well with my German phone number.

Unfortunately the described KYC procedures seems to be not available anymore, as when I try to identify from abroad I only get the option to send a notarized copy of my foreign passport to their offices in Russia. Same problem also in the app - Does anyone know, whether the in the article described procedure still works and I only have bad luck (or need a VPN from a non-EU country), or whether this method is cut off and you can identify only in Russia at an office'

AnnaZ

I really sympathise. I seem to have spent half the time since I got here wrestling with various forms of KYC. It's enough to test the patience of a saint.

Hopefully someone else will reply and shed some light on this.

Jabod

Hello Irena and other members of the forum!
I am very interested in the subject of this thread as I am trying to set up a Yoomoney MIR card ahead of a visit to Russia. I am based in the UK.
To my great surprise, I was able to receive a virtual MIR card using the remote verification process, involving only a photo of my passport, a selfie and a UK phone number. (Useful tip: do not try to get the Yoomoney app to photograph the passport, which in my experience is impossible. Simply take the photo yourself and upload it. It took me an hour to figure that out!)
My problem now is that, having received the virtual MIR card linked to my Yoomoney account, it is impossible to set the card up for NFC contactless payments with my phone. Every time I try to do that, it just says "it didn't work". This happens even when I select Yoopay as my default NFC payment method in my phone settings.
Does anyone know what the problem may be? Is there any solution? If necessary I can order a physical card to be sent to the UK, but the Yoomoney site says that can take up to 6 weeks.

Jabod

To provide an update on this issue: I applied for a physical Yoomoney MIR card to be sent to my home address in the UK. The card took four weeks to arrive. Of those four weeks, the card spent three weeks sitting at the Russian postal service and then in the fourth week the card finally wended its way to the UK (I think most of that final week it was sitting at a depot for incoming international mail).

I know what was happening to the card in transit because my Yoomoney account informed me when the card was still in Russia and when it had left. During the last day or so I then got updates from the UK's Royal Mail. The card was sent recorded delivery so I signed for it on arrival (I in fact requested Royal Mail to keep the package at a local post office and picked it up there). Quite impressed with how smooth and transparent this process was, though it took four weeks.

Even before the physical card arrived, I have been using the separate Yoomoney virtual card to make purchases in roubles ahead of my trip to Russia. E.g. I paid for my hotel this way. I already have an existing Russian bank account so I funded the Yoomoney virtual card with funds from that bank account. I have not tried funding the card from outside Russia. Apparently, there are ways to do this but it sounds complicated.

I was surprised by how easy it was to complete the KYC verification for Yoomoney. It is certainly possible to do this from abroad, simply by taking a photo of one's passport and a selfie. They will accept an international phone number, so you do not need a Russian one.

My main advice to anybody trying to complete the KYC verification is DO NOT USE THE YOOMONEY APP TO TAKE THE PASSPORT PHOTO. This was impossible when I tried (there was no way to align the passport to the app's satisfaction). I almost gave up, but I eventually discovered that if I instead uploaded a passport photo I had taken myself, the app was perfectly happy to use the uploaded photo for the passport details.

I was unable to get my phone to accept Yoomoney Pay for contactless payments. Possibly my phone is not compatible (it says on the Yoomoney website you need a smartphone "that has been officially released in the Russian Federation"). But I am not bothered by the inability to set up Yoomoney Pay as I prefer using a physical card anyway.