What difficulties do foreign tourists in Russia experience with Mir cards?

On Wednesday, Vice President of the Association of Banks of Russia (ADB) Alexey Voylukov said that the ADB proposes to simplify the process of identifying foreign citizens to receive Mir tourist cards. Problems after the cards of international payment systems of foreign banks stopped working in Russia began back in 2022. Last year, the intensity of the discussion reached such an extent that it seemed as if only the lack of a tourist card was holding back the flow of people wishing to visit Russia.

“Tourists from Arab countries love both Moscow and Russia – in the fall our tourists go there, and in the summer citizens of these countries come to us,” said the head of the Ministry of Economy, Maxim Reshetnikov. The necessary law was adopted in June 2023, then they waited for a government resolution with a list of 25 countries from which the map would be available to tourists. Sberbank took the first step. At the beginning of December, the first deputy chairman of the bank’s board, Kirill Tsarev, said that the subsidiary UMoney began remotely opening accounts and issuing cards for foreigners. But the influx of tourists, as well as partner banks, is not yet visible in Russia.

To be fair, it is worth noting that the procedure for obtaining a Mir card, even after all the facilitating regulations, does not look simple. As Alexey Voylukov explained to Kommersant, a foreigner, after undergoing identification at his bank collaborating with a Russian one, opens an account and card in the latter, which remain inactive until his arrival in the Russian Federation. Here he must sign an agreement with a local bank and only after that he will be able to activate and top up the card, as well as receive it physically. The only difference between the “complex” procedure is that to receive a card in the Russian Federation without the procedures described above you will have to wait several days.

Russian banks could show more interest in tourists, but the problem is a foreign intermediary bank, which is needed for identification. Finding such a person turned out to be difficult, since cooperation with a Russian bank implies compliance with Russian legislation, and this may entail secondary sanctions. For a Russian bank, there is a risk that the foreign counterparty will not fulfill all the requirements for identifying the client, and here the domestic credit institution may come under attack.

ADB proposes to allow Russian banks full-fledged remote identification for foreigners. This can be done, for example, during a video call, where a foreign citizen will present a passport, the photo of which matches his image. But even in this case, expecting rush demand for the Mir card from foreign tourists, who are still forced to bring cash currency to the Russian Federation in order to pay non-cash in rubles here, is the height of optimism.