Russian Card Not Working for PLN Tokens? What Works Instead
Russian-issued Visa and Mastercard stopped working internationally in 2022, on every site including ours. Cards from Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia or the UAE, and Wise or Revolut accounts, work normally. Here is the honest rundown.
Why your Russian card does not work here, or anywhere
If your card was issued by a bank in Russia, it stopped working for international online payments in March 2022, when Visa and Mastercard suspended their Russian operations. This is not a restriction we chose and not one any website can lift: the card networks themselves no longer process those cards outside Russia.
So when your payment page times out or your card is rejected, nothing is wrong with your meter, your order or your internet. The card simply cannot complete an international payment, on our site or on any other.
What works instead
Most people who have lived in Bali for a while already carry one of these, and all of them work normally on our site:
- Cards issued outside Russia, by a bank where you genuinely hold an account. Visa and Mastercard from banks in Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, Turkey or the UAE are ordinary international cards and are accepted like any other. If the card supports 3-D Secure confirmation in its banking app, payment goes through like it would for anyone else.
- Wise and Revolut. If you hold an account with an EU, UK or other international fintech, its cards work here, including through Apple Pay and Google Pay.
- Apple Pay and Google Pay. Both are supported at checkout and work with any of the cards above.
- A friend or family member abroad. Anyone with a working card, iDEAL or Wero can buy a token for your meter number from anywhere. That is the normal use of this service, not a special arrangement: most of our customers buy tokens for a meter that is not their own, usually for family in Indonesia. The token arrives by email and works on your meter regardless of who paid.
Whichever way you pay, delivery is the same: enter your meter number, pay, and the 20-digit token usually arrives within 1 minute.
What we cannot accept, honestly
To save you time at checkout:
- Mir cards are not accepted here, and in practice no European payment provider processes them.
- Transfers from Russian banks are not accepted, in any currency.
- Cryptocurrency is not accepted. We know it is the workaround of choice for many, but we are a Dutch business working with a regulated European payment provider, and we keep our rails simple: you pay with Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay, iDEAL, Bancontact, or Wero.
All payments run through our payment provider's standard screening, and we comply fully with EU sanctions. We would rather tell you this on a help page than have you discover it at the payment step at midnight.
Коротко по-русски
Российские карты Visa и Mastercard не работают для международных онлайн-платежей с марта 2022 года. Это ограничение платёжных систем, снять его не может ни один сайт, включая наш. Карты «Мир», переводы из российских банков и криптовалюту мы не принимаем. Все платежи проходят стандартную проверку нашего платёжного провайдера, и мы полностью соблюдаем санкционные правила ЕС.
Что работает: карты, выпущенные банком, в котором у вас действительно открыт счёт, например в Казахстане, Грузии, Армении, Кыргызстане, Сербии, Турции или ОАЭ, а также Wise и Revolut, в том числе через Apple Pay и Google Pay. Если у вас есть такая карта, вы можете купить токен PLN для счётчика вашей виллы прямо сейчас: введите номер счётчика, оплатите, и 20-значный код обычно приходит на почту в течение 1 минуты.
Также токен для вашего счётчика может купить кто угодно из-за границы: достаточно номера счётчика, код придёт по почте и подойдёт к счётчику независимо от того, кто платил. Это обычный сценарий нашего сервиса, а не особая схема: большинство наших клиентов покупают токены для чужих счётчиков, как правило для родных в Индонезии.