Russian Companies Reportedly Using Crypto for International Payments

Russian businesses are reportedly using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to make international payments.

It’s a trend that comes in the wake of legislative changes that permitted these types of payments to get around western sanctions, Reuters reported Tuesday (Dec. 26), citing comments from Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov.

As the report noted, the sanctions — issued following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — have made it tougher for Russia to trade with partners like China and Turkey. But this year, Russia began allowing crypto for foreign trades, and is working on legalizing the mining of crypto such as bitcoin.

“As part of the experimental regime, it is possible to use bitcoins, which we had mined here in Russia (in foreign trade transactions),” Siluanov told Russia 24 television channel.

“Such transactions are already occurring. We believe they should be expanded and developed further. I am confident this will happen next year,” he said, adding that using digital currencies to make international payments represent the future.

PYMNTS explored this idea earlier this week in a report on events in the cryptocurrency/blockchain world in the past year.

“Cross-border payments, historically plagued by high fees and slow transaction times, underwent a significant transformation in 2024,” that report said. “Blockchain technology emerged as a key enabler, offering transparency, speed and cost efficiency.”

Stablecoins play a key role, PYMNTS added, letting businesses bypass traditional correspondent banking networks and settle transactions almost instantly.

“Blockchain technology and public blockchains in particular, are opening up a number of new use cases, one of which is to transfer value — such as remittances — from one country to another,” Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president, blockchain and digital assets at Mastercard, told PYMNTS.

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has found that cryptocurrency use in making cross-border payments could be the winning use case that the sector has been searching for. The research shows that blockchain-based cross-border solutions, especially stablecoins, are being increasingly used by firms looking for better ways to transact and expand internationally.

“Blockchain solutions and stablecoins — I don’t like to use the term crypto because this is more about FinTech — they’ve found product-market fit in cross-border payments,” Sheraz Shere, general manager of payments and commerce at Solana Foundation, said in an interview here earlier this year. “You get the disintermediation, you get the speed, you get the transparency, you get extremely low cost.”