Recently due to the US sanctions the Visa and Mastercard operators have blocked their services for some Russian banks. Russia, in turn, blocked these companies from being members of fintech– the Russian R&D center for new financial technologies– and is now working on its own local payment system called “Mir.”
Perhaps partly due to this fact, all football fans who have come to watch live games of the World Cup in the Russian capital are welcome to pay their way there with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Feel free to spend your digital riches
Unfortunately, one cannot buy tickets to the stadiums with crypto directly. But there is a good way out– third-party sellers, like Wirex and ePayments, do accept digital coins instead of fiat money. Besides, ePayments also offers its customers plastic cards where customers may put their Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash.
Besides, it is not just tickets that can be bought with virtual money. Some pubs in Moscow, St. Petersburg and some other Russian cities will sell you any drinks and meals to go with them.
Pay your hotel and restaurant bills with crypto
The Russian city of Kaliningrad, where some of the championship games will take place, has gone even further to please crypto enthusiasts and make profits. In this city located in the heart of Europe, one can easily hire a hotel room. The hotel chain collaborates with the Russian firm Free-Kassa and using an FK-Wallet you can make payments in 14 various coins.
Except those hotels, several bars, airlines and even travel agents will be happy to accept your virtual money.
Russian crypto laws
Meanwhile, the Russian authorities are debating how they should collect taxes from their citizens who trade crypto assets. Meanwhile, some people in the country have already started paying this tax, in the same way, they would do it on non-crypto profits, without waiting for the government’s decision to be announced.
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Alex Dovbnya
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov