A Swift transfer of 16,000GBR was made to me from Raiffesienbank to my Spanish bank account, It is now 7th day and no money has been credited into my account. Should I be worried it might have been blocked by an intermidiary bank? Who has an idea how many days a swift transfer from Raiffesienbank in Russia should take
Has anyone had experience with the service SendNOW? They have an app. I was thinking, how best to move my own money to Russia if I want to move there from Canada.
Currently the only way to send money to Russia excluding any dodgy crypto transfers which you cannot is as follows
- Using Profee to non sanctioned banks direct to card
- Korona Pay to anyone in Russia with their own Korona Pay account cash pick up only
- Volet.com but not available in UK and a few other countries
There are now simply no other non crypto transfer services left other than above.
None of these ways work from Canada without high losses. SendNow is an app I found on play store. Seems to be run by Russians. You lose money too but maybe worth it as it seems to be the only way. Anyone had experience with this SendNOW?
@JBB SendNow is an app I found on play store. Seems to be run by Russians. You lose money too but maybe worth it as it seems to be the only way. Anyone had experience with this SendNOW?
I have just used it, out of curiosity.
a short foreword: I travel and spend time in Russia since 2005. As I live in Norway near Swedish border and Oslo airport, I always had relatively fast logistics, be it flights, flights+ train or my car + ferry.
I have a bank account in Russia, and therefore MIR card. I use exchangers that I will not name because FBI and EU are always listening the web in order to dress maps of most used exchangers, that they try to hit in some way.
One must know what it is about: because a combination of 2022 sanctions ie. agressive banking and financial attack from USA and EU puppet, and Russia’s own will to be self-reliant and not a slave of US$, Russia has left the american ecosystem.
BUT, besides USA and EU, most of the world are in line with Russia, ie. most countries don’t want to be $ slaves, which means that exchanges always are done by russians, typically naturalized citizens of another country, so have a feet in each world, in the American banking scheme ie:: VISA, Mastercard, SWIFT-SEPA and in Russia where they have bank accounts.
They often live in Baltics, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, so near border and can deposit $/€ cash in the nearest russian bank.
Or they live in Russian friendly places like Turkya, Emirates, Hong-Kong.
Some are joint partnerships of Russian expatriates and domestic Russians.
People give them money in €/$ (optionally from their own national currency, like in my case norwegian krones) amd they put rubles on the recipient account in Russia.
They do their own swaps either by regular trips to Russia with cash, exchanged to RUB, or by electronic/crypto currencies.
Direct transfers from euro-american plastic cards/account to RUB are no longer possible. KoronaPay, Profee did that because they are in Cyprus, and Cyprus benefited from some level of off-shore status. But EU and USA have threatened and FBI HAS agents in Cyprus just in order to police the banking sector.
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So … sendNOW: I have installed the app and in fact it’s not different that other exchangers, but slower, because if you use plastic card they mention 1 business day. I you use other exchangers, it takes few moments, after your card and ID has been verified: selfie while holding the card showing its number but few digits masked with a finger or a piece of papers, optionally ID verification too.
You submit the documents and they validate quickly, then you can transfer, and the time it takes is the time they wait for receiving confirmation with receipt from recipients bank.
but with sendNOW I had no card/ID verification when i started a transfer. Made the payment with plastic card, shows ok but waiting for confirmation on my online bank, and on sendNOW in “processing” status.
An annoying point is that after I made the payment, ie. after my bank authentication/validation portal ok’eyd it, the app sent anyway question about the transaction:
in order to click yes or no I had to go to my card’s online bank to check if my account was debited. It was, so I clicked “Transfer paid”, but on my bank the transaction is mentioned as under processing; the lighter text at bottom
we can see btw on that receipt that in this case processing goes through a Lituanian bank..
sendNOW are clear about the delays both on their site, in the app when choosing a payment method, and again after payment is done if by card:
conclusion:
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if you use cryptocurrency, you need to first do that step, and after on exchanger payment to recipient will be very fast. Not different that using other exchangers
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if you use plastic card, you have to wait one business day in order to be sure it went well.
I prefer the other exchangers, faster and they have solid authentication/confirmation routines by combining email, Telegram and some 2-steps one-time codes.
Send Now used to use a third party account to send money which they have now changed and by all accounts recent reviews are positive about transfers to Russia. However looking at the exchange rates offered they will take around 8% from you, thats the difference between market price and the one you will receive. As I originally replied to you Profee is currently the cheapest at around 5%. Not ideal but in these days of sanctions you won’t find a cheaper option.
my MIR was credited today 14:15 MSK time ie 13:15 Oslo time ( i live in Norway), so by today saturday midday, ~14hrs after the transfer was done on sendNOW app. In the app it shows as “Delivered”:
and the recipient being myself on my Tinkoff account easy also to check receipt. In this case the money came from an account at ALFA:
so, as I commented earlier sendNOW in my case, a norwegian VISA card, didn’t ask for what is nicknamed KYC (Know Your Customer) processing: verification of ID, verification of the card with selfie.
In Norway like in most of Europe (included Russia), these verifications are not really needed because all online purchases with card are to be authentified throught the 3D Secure portals of our banks and 2FA.
I guess that the guys at sendNOW don´t do manual KYC, in the cases of european cards because as the debit receipt of my bank shows, they use a bank in Lituania ie. EU, so using also 3DSecure.
But then that may be one of the reason they mention they don’t accept USA cards because 3DSecure is maybe not required by USA banks. Americans are notorious for refusing to adopt systems developed abroad.
anyway that’s the main difference between sendNOW and others: no initial KYC in order to use a card.
Disadvantage is that transaction in slower.
@phoebe Profee is currently the cheapest at around 5%. Not ideal but in these days of sanctions you won’t find a cheaper option.
Profee has more limitations. Like KoronaPay it is a Cyprus company:
it may work with UK cards to Russia or to some Russian banks, because these Mediterranean places (Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus) are all more or less part of imperial colonial British remains and loopholes with the City (London). At least it has been so for decades.
But Cyprus is also in EU/EEA realm and hit by two controls: EU and USA.
Ok, whatever the banking geo-politics, in my case, resident of Norway (and EU citizen but citizenship plays no role in this case) I can’t transfer to Russia. At least not to my Russian bank.
a proof of it right now. I input 600 NOK to send to my MIR, and: “Las tranferencias bancarias a esta targeta no estan disponibles.” :
and the app turns to this screen, repeating the message:
the “Hemos explicado en las instrucciones cómo transferrir dinero a Rusia en 2023” and so clicking on “Continuar con la instrucción” opens a browser with their blog page where the 2023 post about Russia is no longer there. Indeed, in the meanwhile EU and USA claws grabbed Cyprus.
One day earlier I tried swapcoin.cc, with an initial step on my AdvCash/Volet account.
For 1495NOK I got 10220RUB, similar loss than sendNOW. From my VISA card the same Lituanian gateway than Profee was used by Volet.
Cheaper?
if you use crypto on a regular basis, you can refill a BTC (bitcoin) wallet when the rate is lower, and proceed to an exchange when it is higher.
As I said Profee is not available in all countries but is currently most widely available of the countries left. Also which Russian bank are you trying to send money to?
@phoebe All of those are crypto transfers, that you don’t know the background of each transaction doesn’t mean it is not happening
@phoebe As I said Profee is not available in all countries but is currently most widely available of the countries left. Also which Russian bank are you trying to send money to?
Profee (and KoronaPay) don’t work for all major russian banks: Sber, VTB, Alfa, UralSib, Gazprom, SovCom, Pochta, Tinkoff, etc. It is like if for UK a transfer system would not work for Barclays, NatWest, Standard Chartered, HSBC, Santander…
This already long ago: https://www.profee.com/articles/money-transfers-to-russia-update but Korona kept doing it longer until they were threatened.
I am with one of the major banks of course. When I opened an account I wanted to be with a major bank and 100% russian, not the local front of a foreign group like Raiffeisen.
These days the faster and cheaper I do is to buy TON coins (Telegram cryptocurrency) and exchange to RUB credited to my MIR.
I have a stronger focus on anonymity than on cost anyway, and when I used Bitcoin I did a previous step with “mixers” up to 5% fee added, to get untraceable coins. Otherwise there is also Monero (XMR) as anonymous coins. The idea is that my own bank, domestic, EU and USA screening and tracking systems don’t know that I send money to an exchanger.
@antoniob Hi and thanks for all of your help antoniob
I have a particular problem. I have to send child maintenance payments to my Russian daughter’s mother in Moscow. I live in the UK. I cannot find a way to send the money to her.
Can you please explain how to send money from the UK to Russia. In particular:
from a UK bank using a UK bank card
to a Russian bank account or MIR card
I have read the above comments and I have a wallet now on Telegram (I think I have)
I went to buy some Ton on Telegram but it sent me to another organisation which wanted my passport ID.
Did you also have to do this? You mention a focus on anonymity so I wondered if you had a way to buy ton anonymously?
Thank you for any help it would be very much appreciated
@antoniob Of course you cannot send money from UK to sanctioned banks! That goes without saying. Currently you can send from UK direct to Raffaisen and Ozon plus a few others. I must have reiterated this on several occasions to you. I currently live in Russia and am transferring from a UK account on a daily basis, like to think I know what I an talking about.
@bob Bob please just ask me direct as I currently do exactly what you are asking about using a UK bank.
Hello phoebe
Thank you for kindly helping. I am grateful.
I want to send money from UK bank to Russia bank (Raiffeisen in Moscow)
Can you please tell me how to do this?
Thank you
Robert
Can you please tell me which UK bank allows you to send money direct to Moscow? Thank you. Best wishes
Bob
@bob The main two banks I use are Raffaisen and Ozon banks, there are a few others but not as mainstream as above. Transfers using Profee are instant to cards from these two banks.
@phoebe Profee doesn’t work in Canada yes? Also what kind of loss in commissions and fees does Raiffaisen charge?
@phoebe Many thanks Phoebe. But what UK bank do you send from? I cannot get my cards to work. Be grateful for any help.
@phoebe Sorry I meant to say that I have a Raiffeisen account. The problem I am having is in the UK. None of my UK cards seem to work.
Plus I forgot to ask. Are you in the UK?
Thanks again
Bob