The transfer service for individuals from Sberbank accounts to wallets of the Chinese payment system Alipay has closed. The ability to send transfers to Alipay wallets has disappeared from the Sber mobile application.
Now the possibilities of transferring money by individuals from the Russian Federation to China are limited. The volume of such transfers was about $1 billion a year before the imposition of sanctions, and more than half of it was accounted for by Sberbank.
Alipay was an alternative to account-to-account transfers. “Demand was high, it was used to transfer funds to their homeland by numerous Chinese working in the eastern part of the Russian Federation, as well as Russians as part of the so-called gray imports to pay for the supply of small consignments of goods from China,” notes a source in the payment market.
Sber launched money transfers to China by phone number on February 1. Alipay is used by over 460,000 businesses around the world.
Sberbank explained that the Alipay wallet replenishment service was implemented in partnership with Western Union, but the latter stopped working on the territory of the Russian Federation. Prior to this, the company announced that it would stop making transfers within Russia from April 1.
At the same time, Sber lost the ability to make money transfers by phone number to Moldova and Azerbaijan, and also lost a major partner from among Uzbek banks - Ipak Yuli. Transfers in the bank application by phone number are available only in seven countries, mostly the CIS.
Sberbank only noted that “transfers by phone number to these banks are temporarily unavailable due to technical reasons on the side of these partner banks.” However, themselves deny the existence of any particular technical difficulties, and experts explain the refusal to work with a Russian bank by its falling under sanctions.
US sanctions were imposed against Sberbank, but the bank was on the Cbbabo.netTA list, not a blocking one. This means that US banks need to block its correspondent accounts from March 26, and without special permission from OFAC, American financial institutions will not be able to open and maintain correspondent accounts of Sberbank and its subsidiaries and accept transactions with their participation.
The head of the board of the Financial Innovations Association, Roman Prokhorov, believes that the situation with cross-border transfers will be determined by the strengthening / easing of restrictions and "proper economic factors."
The other day, Sber announced that transfers abroad through Sberbank Online can be received in the form of cash only until March 17, 2022. They also went through Western Union. Sberbank explained that it is possible to transfer money abroad by phone number in a non-cash form, credited to a card or account in a foreign bank.
bbabo.Net