This is a wiki crowdsourced by the Monzo Community to help you travel with Monzo.
Just like Wikipedia, anyone can edit it to help out others. If you have any tips or feedback for visiting Russia with Monzo, please feel free to edit this guide. You can also add a comment or question below — someone will then incorporate your comment into the main text below and then delete your comment. To create your own “Monzo in …” guide if one doesn’t already exist, just copy this template into a new post and write away!
Safe travels!
Currency
Russia uses the Russian ruble (â‚˝)
Card usage
Generally no problem at all as everywhere takes MasterCard though you may be asked for your pin number after the seller has used contactless to capture your card details. This contactless and pin is perfectly normal.
ATMs
You can withdraw money from most ATMs with no problems, be aware that some may charge you for the pleasure of using them. To name one, Alfa-Bank has no fees and withdrawals are seamless.
Payment and withdrawal limits
All Monzo cards have some payment and withdrawal limits. To check yours before you leave, go to your Profile section of the app and tap on Limits.
Crowdsourced merchant data
Data will most likely be scant so please try and contribute relevant feedback about transactions
Miscellaneous
To edit this guide, just tap the pencil icon below. Alternatively, add a reply with your comments and someone from the community will incorporate your suggestions into the guide and then delete your comment.
I couldn’t find a good place to report this, so please direct me if there is one.
Monzo cards are not currently accepted by Sberbank of Russia,
there payment systems are used by online retailers extensively in russia and It’s becoming a pain.
I suspect that they have not updated their systems to accept Monzo as a bank.
Is this something Monzo can help with or do I need to try and chat to Sberbank?
A number is Russian banks have international sanctions which makes them unable to connect to the Visa or MasterCard networks, meaning customers have had problems with payments online or in shops.
I know that Sberbank’s sanctions consist of access restrictions to the EU and US capital markets but I couldn’t find if they have the Visa or MasterCard restriction. Russia have created their own Visa and MasterCard rival called Mir for Russians to avoid these issues. I do know Sberbank replaced all 10 million of their own Visa and MasterCards with Mir which suggests they had issues with them. If it isn’t the restricted access, then it could simply be they haven’t updated their BINs because they don’t use Visa/MasterCard anymore.
Either way, you may have problems using western payments in Russia with certain banks. You should contact customer services, in app, to see if they know anything more really.
I couldn’t find a good place to report this, so please direct me if there is one.
Monzo cards are not currently accepted by Sberbank of Russia,
there payment systems are used by online retailers extensively in russia and It’s becoming a pain.
I suspect that they have not updated their systems to accept Monzo as a bank.
Is this something Monzo can help with or do I need to try and chat to Sberbank?
After Yandex took over Uber in Russia, Uber stopped accepting almost all UK bank cards (including Monzo). When you are ordering a ride, the only payment option is Cash.
But not always, for some reason, we were able to pay for the ride with my wife’s Barclays visa debit card.
In the help section, it said:
To work properly your card must be available for online payments and have permission to conduct transactions with Russia (you can get this information in your bank).
Does anyone know how difficult to get this permission and if Monzo can get one?
Update:
On the other hand, when I tried to use Yandex Taxi (basically the same thing now in Russia), I was able to add Monzo card as a payment (got notification that Y took and refunded some money( and order a ride, but as soon as a trip started, the payment method was switched to cash with the error message that Yandex couldn’t reserve the money for the ride.
Hi all. I have been in the Altai region of Russia in the last week and both ATM and over the counter payments have worked no problems. Even with Sberbank which seems to be an issue for others on this thread. No issues for me though!
I’m in Russia now. Sberbank cash points haven’t accepted the card - although the machine was only labelled with the MIR payment system, perhaps they don’t accept any others. Tinkoff cash point worked fine and all card payments have been accepted everywhere else (contactless/Apple Pay/chip & pin)
I’ve never had any problems paying for things at a POS, and contractless is pretty ubiquitous now in the major cities. It just seems to be online transactions there sometimes fail.
Also interestingly a lot of online businesses say that international cards won’t work, but when I’ve tried they go through successfully. For example https://spb.av.ru/page/delivery (see payment section) A bank card with an Internet payment (VISA, MasterCard cards are accepted.) Only cards issued on the territory of Russia and CIS countries, except Moldova, are accepted for payment.
I’ll be back over there in a few weeks so will do more investigation
Just back from Petersburg and din’t have any trouble paying for anything with my card. Although I found the contactless+PIN thing a bit odd. Saying that, when I went there a few years ago they made you enter your PIN and then sign for it too, so it’s a step in the right direction! I didn’t withdraw any cash abroad as I already had some RUB
Used my Monzo card in all three trips to Russia (Oct 2017, June 2018, September 2018), no problem except for one store in Tula (180 km away from Moscow) when there was a glitch with the card terminal. After a few attempts, the payment went through.
Paid for Uber and Yandex using my Monzo card, no problems.
We have had repeated issues in Russia with Monzo. It’s worked around 80% of the time but there’s been 4 or 5 occasions so far when it’s failed to go through at card terminals of retailers, despite multiple attempts. It’s worth mentioning that Apple Pay has failed all of the time with Monzo here, so make sure you add your card manually to things like Yandex. Not entirely sure whether these issues are limited to Monzo or other UK/EU cards. We have been using a Russian card as an alternative when Monzo failed.
