Hi all, im planning a trip to Moscow and Saints Petersburg and i was wondering about the payments… i thought about bringing cash and then find a good currency exchanger to change euros in rubles, possibly with a good exchange rate.
Also i heard about a new payment method called Pir or PayInRussia, which let’s me open a digital card and top up my wallet using my foreign bank giving me the solution to pay everything.
Do you know if it’s a really working method?
Thank you
@Learned_Capibara You can find information about this on other recent threads.
As i said in another topic, when i fly to Russia or need to buy something in or from Russia while abroad i always use Pir.
Never had problems with it and it’s still working!
@Tsar_Vlad
I would be careful using PIR (payinrussia), since there are - at least in Europe - many reports of banks closing accounts when there is the slightest suspicion that the customer could be transferring money to Russia or Belarus. PIR is connected to a Russian bank under sanctions, so trying to send money this way would surely trigger a warning, in best case.
@donFlorero Absolutely 100% correct.
I agree that one should be catious about using this app (and I would say the same about any other single payment method when visiting Russia, as it is preferable to have diverse options in case of unexpected problems).
But I think, in fact, Pay in Russia in not owned by any sanctioned Russian entity. The bank behind this app is called Industrial Agricultural Bank, also known as Promselhozbank (yes, they omit the usual “k” from this transliteration). This is not the same bank as RUSSIAN Agricultural Bank (Rosselkhozbank), which is the large and heavily-sanctioned state-owned agricultural bank.
In fact, Industrial Agricultural Bank is such an obscure bank that it is a bit of a mystery why exactly this bank now operates the only functioning app enabling foreigners to pay from their Western accounts. What’s more, the app is now being heavily promoted by the Russian government, which is arguably quite suspicious. Industrial Agricultural Bank is owned by a little-known businessman called Vladimir Sysoyev (he also does not appear on any Western sanctions list).
In any case, most Western banks don’t differentiate between sanctioned and unsanctioned Russian banks: they simply shun transacting with any of them. On top of that, Visa And Mastercard have their own policies that prevent any of their cards from working in Russia.
The reason Pay in Russia works despite these restrictions is that transactions are routed via intermediary banks in third countries. It remains possible that, if the Western banks and card issuers wise up to the ultimate destination of these funds, they will stop servicing these transactions. Or possibly the Western regulators responsible for sanctions might one day decide to prevent this.
@Jabod You are right, Промсельхозбанк is a minor, not sanctioned bank. But, as you say, caution is needed anyway. I wouldn’t transfer funds to PIR from a bank account I cannot afford to have frozen or closed.