בלאַקינג עפּל פּייַ: ווי צו באַצאָלן פֿאַר פּערטשאַסאַז אין אונדזער לאַנד
Due to the economic sanctions of Western countries against the Federation, some cards stopped working with the iPhone and Apple Watch. We tell you what to do if your card is blocked by Apple Pay

We are all used to the convenience of contactless payments. At first, these were bank cards with an NFC chip, and in 2014 this feature was added to Apple smartphones, and a year later to Android smartphones. At the end of February 2022, some Apple Pay users faced the consequences of sanctions – their cards stopped working with the popular American service. 

Sanctions have been imposed on a number of banks with which Apple Pay may have problems, and Apple itself has announced that it is limiting the operation of the service in Our Country. What exactly the restrictions are is still unclear.

Moreover, some users have encountered the problem that they do not add a card to Apple Pay. In our material, we will talk about blocking Apple Pay in more detail.

Why Apple Pay may not work in Our Country

At the beginning of March 2022, Apple began blocking the Apple Pay contactless payment system in Our Country. First, five banks fell under the sanctions – VTB, Sovcombank, Promsvyazbank, Novikombank and Otkritie. After him, other financial institutions were added. Until March 24, Apple Pay worked unstably with cards of the MIR payment system, but later it was also disabled. 

The same applies to purchases within the Apple system itself – it is problematic to pay for subscriptions or paid applications with cards.

It is difficult to say when Apple Pay will work again in Our Country – there is no official information about this. Apple has officially suspended the supply of its products to the territory of the Federation, but at the same time, the company has applied for certification of the new iPhone SE 3, Mac Studio and Studio Display1. This suggests that the company is counting on the sale of these devices in Our Country.

How to pay with Apple Pay if the bank is under sanctions

Officially, you can not use Apple Pay from March 2022. However, in a few months, users have come up with a method to bypass the blocking – but it only works with MIR payment system cards that were previously added to the official Wallet application. Also, its performance was confirmed only with the Tinkoff bank.

The essence of the method is to prevent your iPhone from receiving a signal from the Apple server about the suspension of work with a bank card. This is done by blocking the DNS server of an American company.

  1. The first step is to create a file that will contain the address of the blocked Apple server.
  2. We go to the site of the online notebook2 and create a new note with the text pr-pod5-smp-device.apple.com, you can write any word in the “Name” field.
  3. Then select the “Backup” item in the menu and save the archive with the file on your smartphone. Next, you need to unpack it.
  4. After you need on the official website of Apple3 put your iPhone into Lost Mode. Before doing this, be sure to make sure that you remember the login and password from your Apple account!
  5. After successfully unlocking your “lost” iPhone, you will have several hours to block Apple’s verification server from accessing the cards that remain in Wallet.
  6. Then you need to install the DNSCloak application from the AppStore. In it, in the Blacklists and Whitelists menu, we specify the previously downloaded file with the address of the Apple server. 
  7. In the main menu of the program, in the “Search” field, type the query “Yandex” to connect this DNS server. After you need to confirm the choice and enable the “Connect on Demand” option. 
  8. Now the Apple verification server will not be able to know that you have an activated MIR card. You can use Apple Pay. To disable the method, just uninstall the DNSCloak program.

Of course, the above method cannot be called a full-fledged method for solving the problem with Apple Pay not working in Our Country. Not everyone has MIR bank cards activated on the iPhone before the imposition of Apple sanctions.

It is possible that SberPay and MIR PAY applications will soon appear in the AppStore with the ability to make contactless payments without manipulating the blocking of Apple DNS servers. This is one of the real alternatives during Apple Pay bank blocking.

Can I use Apple Pay if it is blocked in the Federation

It will most likely not be possible. It is likely that there will be some semi-legal ways to circumvent Apple Pay sanctions, but using them would be financially dangerous and illegal.

Perhaps the safest method would be to link a foreign card from a bank that is not blocked in Apple Pay. But in this case, you need to find a cardholder who you fully trust. But this option will not work if you try to pay through a terminal that is connected to a bank blocked in Apple Pay.

If Apple Pay will be blocked, the client will not lose money. To simplify things, Apple Pay is a kind of virtual copy of a physical bank card. Even if all smartphones are completely banned in Our Country, the money from your card will not go anywhere. But for payment you will always have to use the card itself, and not a smartphone or smart watch.

Apple Pay supports most banks around the world that use Visa, Mastercard, or MIR. The user is not prohibited from using cards that were issued in other countries. A complete list of supported banks is available on the Apple website.4.

פאָלקס שאלות און ענטפֿערס

Answered questions from KP readers about blocking Apple Pay in Our Country Executive Director of the financial aggregator company #VseZaymyOnline Artur Karaichev.

How does the blocking of Apple Pay work in the case of cards of banks that have fallen under sanctions?

The Apple Pay service is no longer available for cards of banks that have fallen under sanctions – VTB, Otkritie, Sovcombank and Novikombank, as well as their subsidiaries. Their clients cannot both add a card to the application and make payments through it, and entrepreneurs who have connected acquiring in them can accept payments in this way. Problems with paying via Apple Pay also began with customers of banks that were not subject to sanctions – but here they often occur when trying to make a payment at a terminal belonging to a sanctioned bank. Due to the suspension of Visa and MasterCard in Our Country, payment in this way will not work abroad, says Artur Karachev.

Is it possible to bypass Apple Pay blocking if you have a card from a bank that has been sanctioned?

It is impossible to bypass the blocking of the card of a sanctioned bank in Apple Pay. In addition, due to the closed nature of the system, there are no alternative payment solutions for Apple devices. Therefore, customers of banks that have fallen under the sanctions can only keep the physical versions of the cards with them, the expert says.
  1. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5367766
  2. https://notepadonline.ru/app
  3. https://www.icloud.com/find/
  4. https://support.apple.com/ru-ru/HT206637

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