Sending Money to Russia During Sanctions

[Manny]

I met a Russian bloke yesterday, purely by chance, we're doing a small bit of business. He's likely to be paying me some money next week. It cropped up that he has money in Russia in the bank, and is blocked from using it here as his Sberbank cards no longer work.

Anyway, I am going to let him pay me in Roubles in Russia instead of £ here. As long as that goes smoothly, and I've no reason to think it won't, I might use him to drop a few bob in the bank for wifey's folks. Pay him £ here, and he can deposit ₽ there.

So if all that goes well, I am happy to assist sensible people here who need to get some cash into Russia for the wife's folks or some such who are blocked from doing so by sanctions-related difficulties.

[redroo]

Steve or Manny, if either of you are able to help me I would be very grateful.
I have a Ukrainian friend from Kharkov who was working undocumented in Russia as a Vet since the first war in 2014.
Obviously now she is totally screwed, having lost her illegal/under paid Vet job and without a bank account at all.
Prior to the sanctions kicking in I had been able to help her via a Russian friend. Now Sberbank is banned from Australia of course. Being able to pay you in the UK and getting rubles to her locally would be great.

[Steveboy]

Steve or Manny, if either of you are able to help me I would be very grateful.
I have a Ukrainian friend from Kharkov who was working undocumented in Russia as a Vet since the first war in 2014.
Obviously now she is totally screwed, having lost her illegal/under paid Vet job and without a bank account at all.
Prior to the sanctions kicking in I had been able to help her via a Russian friend. Now Sberbank is banned from Australia of course. Being able to pay you in the UK and getting rubles to her locally would be great.

What city is she in ? Im not sure If I can help for the simple reason KoronaPay only allow about 8,000 Euros in 6 months to be transferred..from the UK , We are already looking for another option when that has gone.. The Estonian border is only a 2 hour bus trip so we maybe doing that later once a month or we do have some other plans..And I have a couple of mates coming over next month so they will bring cash for us..

Manny would be able to do it for you or someone in the UK or Europe who is not sending regular money .. BUT there looks like another issue with Koronapay and that is in the last week they removed Russia from the destination country , we have account there so it still seems to work fine, maybe if you contact them they have a good Live chat on the site and ask if they are still sending money to Russia ..

IF it is still ok for a new account holder then it should be easy for some one in the UK to help you out ..

[Manny]

Steve or Manny, if either of you are able to help me I would be very grateful.
I have a Ukrainian friend from Kharkov who was working undocumented in Russia as a Vet since the first war in 2014.
Obviously now she is totally screwed, having lost her illegal/under paid Vet job and without a bank account at all.
Prior to the sanctions kicking in I had been able to help her via a Russian friend. Now Sberbank is banned from Australia of course. Being able to pay you in the UK and getting rubles to her locally would be great.

As long as there is somebody's account she can use to receive, I should be able to help when I've verified this chap I met in the next few days.

[Manny]

So the Russian guy has paid me in Russia, we have also used him to send the folks a few quid and he's happy to continue as he has cash there and not as much as he would like here. So I am now in a position to make modest amounts of money emerge in a Russian bank account for anyone who is a known regular participant here who needs this.

We'll be using xe.com rates at the time of transfer for ease, as they are mid market and work for both sides. As long as the руб stays fairly stable, that should work OK.

As its a bit of a faff in the respect that I've got to receive money either to the bank or Paypal from wherever you might be in the world, send it to wifey, she sends £ to the guy here, he sends руб to her account in Russia and she will send it onto the recipient. And as she has to arrange it all on Whatsapp with the guy, she wants a modest 1200 руб fee for each one she does, deducted from the payment in Russia.

So if you want to send money to Russia, here's how it works. We are using £ as a base currency. If you want to use Paypal, you'll send £ sterling as a gift - (if not a gift it can be charged back later and I'm not getting into all that). So you'll convert from your currency into £ your side and the rate between your currency and £ will be between you and Paypal. I can take bank to bank £ in the UK, I can also take Euros direct to the bank in Estonia or Belgium, less any receiving fees, and the xe rate to £ will apply. I can also take USD to my US account and the conversion to £ will be whatever Wise does it at that day less any fee they may charge (nominal).

What happens then is we send the guy the £ here, and using the xe rate, ask him to put the corresponding amount of руб in wifey's account in Russia. She will send on to your recipient straight away. There's no fee Russian side (apart from wifey's 1200 руб deducted at this point) if your recipient is in Sberbank. To other Russian banks, I gather there's a small fee which would be deducted too.

What you need to have: For Sberbank recipients, card number and full name, including patronymic, preferably in Russian. For other banks, full details for transfer, which will be name, BIC/AC/IBAN numbers, etc, your recipient will know what to supply for an in-country bank transfer. Supplying accurate information will be your responsibility. I see no reason Belarus cant be included, I assume the two banking systems are pretty much hand in glove.

If you haven't got the recipients bank information, and wifey has to call your recipient in Russia to get account details, or for any other reason, she wants 1200 руб to do that too.

£100 is probably a sensible minimum amount to send I'd suggest. Its probably not worth you bothering for less, but that's up to you. As for a maximum, lets not go daft, probably £300 is a sensible maximum per transaction for now (about $400 US). We don't want to give the guy enough in one go to tempt him to vanish as I'll have to cover it if he did. I think he is sound enough, but lets not tempt fate.

I don't want to get into squabbles about what exchange rate there might have been yesterday when you sent it, and today when we sent it on or any similar nonsense (imagine Moby type silliness). If that's you, don't bother, make your own arrangements elsewhere. It will be what it is, rates and bank fees will be what they are. It's a good will, low cost favour I'm offering to friends and members here, and wifey makes a nominal $15 or so from each one for her trouble, so at the point it becomes work or time consuming, it will stop.

PM me if you want to arrange this. 

[Orchid]

I also can help with rubles in Russia.

[martincop]

Thanks Manny - my friend got the funds. You are a true godsend! Thank you so much for offering this service to Russia.

[Manny]

Thanks Manny - my friend got the funds. You are a true godsend! Thank you so much for offering this service to Russia.

You're welcome, Martin. 

Something we both learned from this which others need to know, make no reference to Russia or use any Cyrillic in any Paypal payment, they will block it. 

Similarly, when I was once paying a service provider that facilitated my trip to North Korea, he was most emphatic that no mention of Korea, any acronyms or any Korean language was to be used in the comment section. He must have ran into this before. Obviously, Paypal has filters for such things.

[Manny]

So I am now in a position to make modest amounts of money emerge in a Russian bank account for anyone who is a known regular participant here who needs this.

36000 руб just done for someone here. Mannypay is still working fine. 

[Steveboy]

Anyone from Europe can send money to Russia just use Koronapay.com..

Sign up to the app.. verify your profile with a selfies and your passport and you're able to send up to 10,000 Euros on that account.. need to send more ? Simple open another account
in another name.. so Husband and wife can send up to 20,000 Euros per year to Babushka .. It was 15,000 per year but they cut it down to 10,000 recently..

Need to send more? get mom, dad, brother and sister to open account 

We have been using for a few months now.. were also buying lots of Roubles from Expats who did a runner when the "Special operation " started and left their Roubles in their Russian bank..

[sparky114]

Well it looks like another door closes to send money to Russia 

We have been using Korona pay since the special operation started and the Sanctions kicked in, but now this looks to of been stopped from the UK with transfers being refunded and no real sense from the company when you complain through the chat function.

Any one else seeing the same thing?

[Manny]

I can still arrange any money anyone wants sending to Russia or Ukraine.

[Markje]

I can still arrange any money anyone wants sending to Russia or Ukraine.

Nah, but I will take a reliable route that allows me to charge my mts.ru phone cards.

[sparky114]

Well further to my message we are now using Profee which allows you to load to a card rather than cash pick up
you just need to visit their site and see what banks are not under Sanctions ( yes there are some)
Luckily we have a Russian Standard Bank account 

HTH

[2tallbill]

I can still arrange any money anyone wants sending to Russia or Ukraine.

I'm sending you a PM

[Olga_Mouse]

Anyway, I am going to let him pay me in Roubles in Russia instead of £ here. As long as that goes smoothly, and I've no reason to think it won't, I might use him to drop a few bob in the bank for wifey's folks. Pay him £ here, and he can deposit ₽ there.

That's what everybody does now, basically... find some friends and / or acquaintances on another side of the moon, who might need to do a transaction "mirroring" yours.

[Zarukio]

Sounds like a smart workaround. I had a similar situation last year where a friend needed to send money back home but was blocked due to the sanctions. We ended up using a mutual contact who had a legit way to transfer funds. Just keep track of everything and make sure it’s all above board.

[andrewfi]

Anyway, I am going to let him pay me in Roubles in Russia instead of £ here. As long as that goes smoothly, and I've no reason to think it won't, I might use him to drop a few bob in the bank for wifey's folks. Pay him £ here, and he can deposit ₽ there.

That's what everybody does now, basically... find some friends and / or acquaintances on another side of the moon, who might need to do a transaction "mirroring" yours.

a
That's how Wise used to work when they started up. It's how people in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan still do the job.

Every now and then a bloke with a briefcase of money will take a flight to balance up the accounts.

[Bodine]

While the recent unfortunate event (war/sanction) really put a damper in what we were doing at the time with my in-laws we fared fairly well under that dire circumstances. We were trying to have our in-laws purchase a condo not too far from where they live - amongst other things.

Wifey's old friend from Novo lives not too far from us. That gal's Mom happen to be fairly wealthy and had in many ways 'supported' my wife's friend despite her living in the US. When the sanction hit, it actually gave us an unexpected opportunity that mutually worked out fairly well.

We transferred money to my wife's gf, and in turn, her mumski transferred monies to my in-laws at the current rate of exchange.