How to live without Apple Pay in Russia 2 years after blocking. We remember, we miss

Yes, they’ve passed two years from now.

Russia was the second most frequently used Apple Pay in the world. The ability to pay for using an iPhone was available to all iPhone and Apple Watch owners, even in private micro-shops in a provincial town. In this regard, we were, it seems, ahead of the planet.

In general, we Very loved Apple Pay. Two years later, I suggest you remember how to adapt to it: you could hold an iPhone, banks and use it yourself. Well, I’ll ask the key question: do you still miss it?

Briefly:

• When did Apple Pay appear in Russia?
  How Apple Pay was disabled in Russia
  How Russians adapted to the disabling of Apple Pay
  Are you on track to eliminate Apple Pay?

When did Apple Pay appear in Russia?

On the evening of October 3, 2016, Apple Pay became available in Russia. At first it was held by Sberbank: the Sberbank Online application now has the function of adding a MasterCard card to Apple’s contactless payment service.

The very next day we walked around Moscow and tested the service, surprising the cashiers and people in line. Paying with an iPhone was unusual, and almost all other Android smartphones did not yet have such a feature – with the exception of Samsung Pay, which launched in the country a month before Apple Pay.

Thanks to the support of Apple Pay, it has appeared in all more or less prospects of Russian banks. The rapid spread of the service led to the creation of modern payment terminals, which then spread throughout the country. Within a year after the launch, the inability to pay for a purchase from an iPhone was bad manners for stores and a great rarity, no matter where you were.

On July 20, 2021, Apple Pay added support for Russian Mir cards.

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How Apple Pay was disabled in Russia

On March 2, 2022, Apple announced that it had limited the operation of the Apple Pay service in Russia. Despite this, over the next three weeks, contactless payments with iPhones go through correctly for most users. The exception was Novikombank, who was among the first to be sanctioned. Thanks to this, he began to join other banks, like VTB.

Since March 23, the owner of an iPhone began to complain about the impossibility of adding a new card to Apple Pay. And on March 25, the already added cards began to be disabled. Over the next seven days, almost all Russians had their Mir cards, previously added to Apple Pay, removed.

Over the next two weeks, people wrote to the editor several times, demonstrating that Apple Pay still worked for them – but they were not the same, as it happened, and we could not provide it. The answer was found thanks to what happened.

On April 9, my iPhone was lost at home. He was discharged and did not live in Locator, so I mistakenly thought that I had lost it in the city. So I turned it on Lost mode through Locator. In addition, it temporarily blocks all cards in Apple Pay until the smartphone owner enters the correct Apple ID password specified in the corresponding device solution to block the lock.

I found the iPhone and entered my Apple ID. And all my cards are World Unlocked in Apple Pay. I went to several different stores and paid for my purchases.

Having checked this method several times in the editorial office, I gave the command to activate Apple Pay in Russia after verification. It turned out that this method works for absolutely everyone.

250 thousand people managed to read the material before the “answer” came: the cards began to be blocked again almost immediately after reactivation, and soon they were completely turned on again. It is still unknown who cut off the oxygen: both Russian banks and Apple itself in Russia threw up their hands.

What is clear is that the history of Apple Pay in Russia has ended for a long time since May. It existed here for 5 years, and during this time the number of transactions in the country through the Apple payment service reached second place in the world.

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How Russians adapted to the disabling of Apple Pay

Very quickly we started carrying cards with us, putting them under the iPhone case or putting magnetic card holders from Apple on top that we had not previously used. Sales of card pocket cases and card holders have skyrocketed tenfold, making them the hottest spring accessories.

Many have had to fight the habit of holding their iPhone to the terminal, which has become an almost unconscious mechanism. Therefore, it is necessary to request a refund for contactless payments using a reliable iPhone. Someone made payments through QR codes, but it had nothing to do with simple Apple Pay, had its own characteristics and has only partially taken root since then.

Banks, meanwhile, were looking for a way to support the new request. In addition to metal rings for contactless payments, which existed before, in the winter of 2022, a keychain and charms from Tinkoff appeared. But they have not yet found great popularity.

At the beginning of 2023, MTS Bank was the first to launch the first payment stickers: smaller bank cards with adhesive bandwidth, which must be attached to the back of the smartphone or on its case. Similar phenomena appeared at Tinkov, Alfa-Bank and Sberbank, and then at many others.

Stickers became a trendy thing for several months, they were ordered in every possible way. As a result, the hype around them died down, and by the fall of 2023, some users stopped using them for a number of reasons.

In January 2024, Apple allowed external apps in the EU to use the iPhone’s NFC module for payments. In other countries this feature is not yet available.

And here we are.

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Are you on track to eliminate Apple Pay?

A simple question for you. How do you pay now? Do you use stickers, QR codes, biometric payments (“smile”), bracelets? Write in the comments how you dealt with it.

I’ll answer this myself: after trying all the alternative payment methods, I ended up leaving only the key fob on the keys and the card in the cardholder. The first is enough in 95% of cases; I take out the card only when, for some reason, contactless payments at the terminal work in principle.

I miss Apple Pay a little, of course. More precisely, if possible, pay with a smartphone. But I can’t say that it was really hard. Plus, from time to time use an Android device, where there are still no objective blocks for contactless payments. But that’s another conversation.

Topic:

▸ Samsung Pay has been disabled, Mir Pay has been removed! How to pay by phone now (very easy)

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