@JBB How can you get that money into your Russian bank account? What does it cost? How much do you lose with exchanging?
you buy rubles on an exchange website with the cryptocurrency, and on the other side someone wires rubles to the russian bank account. Fees are mentioned on the chosen exchange site.
Recipient’s account will show the incoming rubles as from some Ivan or Natasha at any Russian bank.
@sewer the process @antoniob mentions is kinda complicated and confusing
well, not, detailed description of steps aside, it is very simple:
Telegram Wallet does embed the two steps into the app, but it is cosmetic.
As for the question asked “how do rubles get to the russian account?”, whatever the way and sites used, it is always the same: at the exchange step, be it through Telegram Wallet or through your chosen exchange, there is some Russian who wires rubles from his/her bank account to the recipient’s one.
The bank record on recipient account will show for instance " 10.000₽ from Ivan S. Alfabank".
reasons why Telegram Wallet, despite convenient, specially for people with no clue about cryptocurrencies, is not ideal:
you may want to control anonymization before the exchange. There are different levels of traceability depending what cryptocurrency is used. BTC for instance has zero anonymity, but there are mixers that effectively make it hard to trace transactions. This comes at a fee, but you play on BTC rate variations, if no hurry, ie. you keep a pool of mixed BTC and buy ₽ at an exchange when rate gets higher.
Telegram Wallet, in case of buying with VISA card, uses only one provider: Neocrypto. Like all providers who are in fact Russians running a business in a shielded juridiction or through proxy entities, they are NOT EU banking/financial services providers. It means they can’t verify authenticity of VISA cards by using the hooks to banks 3D-Secure into specific state databases. What these people at Neocrypto, but also AdvCash/Volet, Payeer, etc, do is that they evaluate plausibility of the combo selfie+passport data + card.
And this may not work sometimes, ie. the Russian guy on the other end, in Vilnius, or Hong-Kong or Dubai or SPb, etc, may consider that the provided scans are not conclusive. Some passports have very small script, the photo on the passport can differ a lot from the selfie, the protective clear sheet over the passport page may cause some reflection hard to avoid, etc.
it is good to have few alternatives, just in case.
limited choice of “P2P” exchangers. You find much more on exchangers listed on Bestchange.
Last week In Russia I had to refill my MIR: on my phone I bought TON with TONkeeper, then at once went to my favorite exchanger (where bonus accumulates as you go) in order to get ₽ wired to my MIR. Took less than an hour.
@antoniob Most people don’t want to be anonymous, only want to transfer cash easy and quick. (Unless you’re doing something illicit) and for the second point, no, telegram offers many providers, not only Neocrypto, many without even having to do KYC. And of course you can buy TON or USDt from any provider, only send them your address.
You get to do more things through external exchangers without any real benefit.
I usually do these operations and the time from buying USDt from a external currency to receiving it in my Russian bank account is less than 20 minutes, even 5 minutes in some cases, not one hour.
@sewer Most people don’t want to be anonymous, only want to transfer cash easy and quick. (Unless you’re doing something illicit) and for the second point, no, telegram offers many providers, not only Neocrypto, many without even having to do KYC
some people want to stay as anonymous as possible as a principle. That’s why it is good to be able to chose a given cryptocurrency and an exchange.
IF you want to buy the easiest way by card, Telegram Wallet redirects to Neocrypto, no alternatives (like Simplex, Transak, MoonPay, etc whatever).. Alternatives are the P2P sellers.
at this step, if you chose “Bank card”
in that example I filled a 50TON to buy. You click the buttom blue bar “Buy 50 TON” and:
no choice: just sent at once to Neocrypto.
First time you will have to pass a verification, and this can be unreliable, you may pass or not for silly reasons.
If I regularly buy on Telegram Wallet, my bank will see a pattern of paying Neocrypto, that is an Estonian-based (formerly Lithuanian based) business run by Russians. And my bank can be very silly.
Again: Telegram Wallet just wraps two operations inside its shell: buy crypto, sell it for ruble.
@sewer less than 20 minutes, even 5 minutes in some cases, not one hour.
sometimes it’s much faster, some other times it’s longer. Cases when it is longer is when the wire from the Russian who works at the exchange service is delayed for whatever temporary reason (technical glitch).
Confirmation time of transaction on the blockchain varies also. One hour is a conservative average.
@antoniob Maybe its something related with your country, in most of the world you can buy crypto with onramper and it lets you choose from many provides, and as I said, you can buy the TON or USDt from any provider you want, you don’t have to do it exclusively from the telegram provider. Just im saying that for most of the people is not worth it to go through all of that when u can do the same, quicker and easier from a single app.
And talking about anonymity, you will end up getting wired or wiring from or to your bank account with all your personal information, so. 
I use Telegram from UK and I can confirm you can only buy through NeoCrypto which is the default for all here.
@phoebe Or maybe is something related with how often you use the account or the volume of your operations, because it lets me choose from many providers
I use BestChange to exchange Bitcoin to YooMoney.
@sewer Yes could be, I’ve found a cheaper way to use Telegram Wallet as the card deposit fees are expensive. From the UK I buy USDT on Kraken using a fast linked bank transfer from Monzo, then transfer from Kraken direct to my Telegram Wallet. Finally use the P2P market to sell USDT direct to my wife’s Russian bank account. After all fees rate works out very close to true UK/RUB price!
I recently also started to use the P2P market on Telegram to send money from the Netherlands to an Russian bank account. It works pretty good for me, but yeah like you said, the card deposit fees are quite expensive compared to the USDT exchange rate. So I would like to learn more about the option you mention to buy USDT on Kraken and send it to your Telegram wallet. I have only been trying it with a small amount of money so far, but because of the fee to send money from Kraken to my Telegram wallet, it wasn’t cheaper for me. Maybe it does get more profitable with bigger amounts of money, as the Kraken fee might has a max? Thanks in advance for your response.
@Mark Good Morning Mark. First of all I have a fully verified Kraken account which I recommend. I can link my Monzo UK bank account to deposit instantly into Kraken with zero fees. Then the fee for buying USDT is 0.99%. The fee for sending USDT to my telegram account is a flat 3 dollars no matter what the value so the more you send the cheaper it is. If you are based in Holland I’m not sure about linking your account options but I would assume the above fees would be similar. Using the method and selling on the P2P market to your chosen Russian bank account is by far the cheapest way to send money to Russia, I currently live in Russia with my Russian wife and have explored all other methods. Currently 1 pound is worth 114 RUB on the so called currency market, Profee will give today only 102 but the above method end to end is 111. Hope that helps.
Goodmorning Phoebe,
Thanks for your explanation, much appreciated! Will definitely give it a try through Kraken, seems worth it.
Right now through Telegram wallet I’m getting pretty close to the normal exchange rate as well. Currently the real exchange rate is 1 EUR = 95,84 RUB. By directly buying USDT in Telegram and sell it on the P2P market for RUB, taking in account the Telegram fee for topping up and selling, it gives me an exchange rate around 1 EUR = 92/93 RUB. Not that bad already, but cheaper is always better.
Thanks again for all the info!
@Mark You are welcome Mark
Is there a work around getting access to the P2P market in the Telegram wallet. It’s telling me I’m in a restricted region (US)…
@orange_kat Is there a work around getting access to the P2P market in the Telegram wallet. It’s telling me I’m in a restricted region (US)…
if you can’t have Telegram Wallet verification, then instead of buying crypto from the main top menu of the wallet, go inside “TON Space”, where you will have to deposit TON or USDT from elsewhere. It’s basically the same, just that the external cryptocurrency provider will not be the ones wrapped into Telegram Wallet.
A good seller of TON is Tonkeeper app, it offers by now four shops, one of them is the shop integrated in Telegram Wallet buy with card option. Or you can search more P2P options from here:
I appreciate the help. Looks like I don’t have access to TON space either…
Probably going to have to use a different wallet. Then use best exchange from there.
@orange_kat Just use Tonkeeper, it’s basically the same as Ton Space, even better I’d say.
@sewer Tonkeeper seems pretty slick! Thanks for the suggestion!
@Irena
Does anyone have experience with crypto in the US? I have a bank account in the Republic of Georgia and in Russia. Also my son has a bank account in Russia. Now I’m back in the US and need to send money to him. Bybit doesn’t work in the US. Does anyone know how I can send with crypto? Thanks in advance for any assistance.
