Almost two months ago, Sberbank made it possible to transfer money to an Alipay wallet in China using a phone number.

Transfers are available in the SberBank Online application. To make a transfer, you must select "Transfers abroad by phone number", then enter the recipient's phone number and full name, after which the transfer will automatically be credited to the found wallet in Chinese yuan.

 In practice, people report that Sberbank refuses to send some at first, but if you repeat it later, everything works out, while some got money in almost minutes, and some in a few days, this is probably due to the fact that Alipay has various user classes. The transfer fee is 1%.

Sberbank is confident that the service will be in demand under the new conditions of sanctions, since almost all Chinese have accounts in Alipay and it will not be difficult to pay your supplier in China by direct transfer to his account in Alipay using his phone number.

Alipay is one of the largest payment systems that is part of the Alibaba Group. Founded in 2004. According to the company's own data, the payment system has more than 460,000 corporate clients.

Sberbank’s plans to launch instant transfers by mobile phone number to China were first announced back in December 2021 by the bank’s deputy chairman of the board, Kirill Tsarev, who noted that China’s Alipay would be Sberbank’s partner.

In addition to China, Sberbank now makes instant cross-border transfers to nine countries (available to 49 partners of them).

Although there have been unconfirmed and unofficial reports that in the future Alipay may unilaterally refuse such a transfer scheme - if anyone encounters a refusal to transfer from Sberbank to Alipay, you probably need to then inform the Russian Embassy in China and clarify there why Russia's largest bank will be restricted from transfers to China, as there have been no official reports that Chinese financial institutions, including Alipay, are going to join anti-Russian financial sanctions.