A Telegram-first virtual card for paying foreign services from Russia, priced for niche convenience

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Wayment is a Russian-language service built around a single idea: a virtual card you fund from a Russian bank account or cryptocurrency, then use to pay foreign services. It is sold through a Telegram bot, the whole process happens in a chat window, and there is no passport or identity check to get started. That combination is unusual, and it is the reason the card exists for some readers and not for others.

I went through Wayment’s own pages, the help centre, and what is publicly said about the company behind it, and came away with a clear picture of what you get and what you do not. The short version: if you need to pay a handful of foreign subscriptions, Wayment does that job at a known price. If you want a general spending card, a physical card, cash, or anything close to bank-grade regulatory protection, it does not.

Conditions are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict

Wayment scores 4.6 out of 10 in my review. The score is not a verdict on whether the card works; it is, instead, a judgement of how much card you get for the price, how transparent the company is, and how far the product stretches beyond the narrow job it was built for. I have set out the criteria and their marks in the table below.

Wayment fits a narrow audience: users who specifically need to pay foreign services, who are comfortable operating through a Telegram bot, and who do not need a physical card or cash. If you are outside that audience, the same price gets you more elsewhere.

Who will they give you the card

Wayment is a Russian-language product. The site and the help centre are in Russian, the Telegram bot is Russian-first, and the top-up flow is built around SBP, the Russian instant-payment system that links any bank in the country. The card itself is virtual, denominated in USD, and accepted wherever the network on the front works. According to Wayment, the card can be used for offline payment in 190+ countries, which is the network’s reach rather than a Wayment guarantee for any specific country.

What is not published is at least as important. Wayment does not list supported or excluded countries, and it does not state any rule about citizenship or residence. That is partly by design: registration is through a Telegram account, and Wayment says “no passport or identity verification is required” to get a card. You register, pick a tier, pay the price, and a virtual card is issued “within a couple of minutes”. After that, the help centre asks you to add an email address, but there is no KYC level to climb to unlock higher limits and no identity document is requested at any tier.

The same absence of paperwork has a flip side. The help centre notes that Apple Pay and Google Pay are restricted in some countries. So even if the virtual card number works, tokenising it into a phone wallet is its own question, and one that depends on where you actually are when you set it up. If you want a card to spend abroad, you should expect to use the number directly at checkout rather than tap-to-pay on your phone. If you want to add the card to a wallet, the answer depends on local rules, not on Wayment.

In practical terms, the audience the card is built for is users paying foreign services, and the audience it does not fit is anyone who needs cash, a physical card, or a card tied to a verified identity.

How to get it

There is no application form, no upload of documents, and no waiting for a manual review. The whole flow happens inside Telegram.

You start by opening the Wayment bot or mini-app and registering with a Telegram account. You pick a tier: Subscriptions at 2,990 RUB, Travel at 3,990 RUB, or Premium at 7,990 RUB. You pay the tier price, and the card is issued “within a couple of minutes”. Wayment sends a welcome bonus of $10 per card to mark the moment. Once the card is in the bot, you can ask the service to add an email address, but that is the only piece of contact information Wayment keeps beyond your Telegram handle.

The card itself is virtual. You get a number, an expiry date, and a CVV, and that is what you type into a checkout form. Wayment allows up to three cards per account, so you can issue separate cards for separate jobs and freeze the ones you do not need. There is no physical card, no delivery, and no shipping address. Subscriptions cards are valid for 5 years, Travel and Premium for 2.5 years.

The network on the front of the card is not stated by Wayment’s official pages. Third-party catalogues describe the card as Mastercard and Visa; for the purposes of acceptance, you should treat the network as whatever the bot shows you on a given card at a given moment. If the network matters for a specific service, check before you pay for the tier.

The absence of identity checks is the feature, not an oversight. Wayment’s pitch is that you can start in minutes without sending in a passport. That is convenient, but it also means there is no verification step to recover access if Telegram account control is lost, and no KYC framework to escalate a dispute through.

Fees: what it really costs

The headline prices are the tier prices, and they look modest in rubles. The first year of service is free; from year two, the annual fee equals the tier price again. The trick is that the per-payment and conversion costs add up fast, and they are the numbers that decide whether the card is worth it for you.

Three everyday scenarios make the fee shape concrete.

A $5 monthly subscription on the Subscriptions tier. You pay 2,990 RUB to issue the card, then $0.30 on the $5 payment. The fixed per-payment fee is a much larger share of a small payment than a large one, and Subscriptions caps successful payments at $30. If your typical bill is $5 to $10, this tier is built for that.

A $40 one-off software purchase on the Travel tier. You pay 3,990 RUB to issue, then $0.50 on the $40 payment. There is no surcharge for the size of the payment beyond the fixed fee, and Travel is the tier most people will end up on for general spending. Note that Travel does not work for ChatGPT or Claude, so an AI subscription is not a Travel use case.

A $300 hardware purchase on Premium. You pay 7,990 RUB to issue, then $0.50 on the $300 payment. Premium is the tier with “extended limits and best top-up rate”, which matters if you fund in rubles often or move larger sums. The 0.50 USD per payment is the same as Travel, so Premium is really a top-up-rate play, not a per-payment play.

What you do not get, and what the table does not show, is any cashback, any reimbursement for failed payments beyond the automatic release of the hold, and any fee-free way to extract money once it is on the card. Withdrawals, transfers, and cash access are not supported. If the card does not work for a given merchant, you have spent the per-payment fee and then a failed-payment fee, and your money is held by the merchant for a few days.

Top up: how to fund the card

Wayment supports two top-up routes and does not, on its public pages, list the third-party assets or the chains it accepts through them.

The first route is SBP, the Russian instant-payment system that connects any bank in the country. SBP works from current accounts, savings accounts, and the credit side of a Russian bank card. The fee is 0%, the minimum is $10, and the credit is “usually a few minutes” at the service’s internal rate. Wayment recommends contacting support if a top-up has not appeared after 15 minutes. Premium gets the best rate for SBP and credit-card top-ups; Subscriptions and Travel use the standard rate.

The second route is cryptocurrency through the app. The Wayment pages say only that “the app displays the available options”, and they do not name coins or networks. That opacity is worth weighing: if you are choosing a coin and a chain for a $1,000 top-up, the difference between a $0.50 Tron transfer and a $20 Ethereum transfer is material, and you cannot see the answer on the help centre. Treat this route as something you try with a small amount first, and confirm the credit before you push the rest.

There is no fee on the Wayment side for either route. On-chain network fees, if you top up in crypto, are charged by the blockchain rather than by Wayment. Once the funds are on the card, the balance lives in the service, in USD, and you cannot withdraw it to a bank account or to crypto. Referral bonuses are an exception: they can be pulled back onto the Wayment card. The balance on a deleted or expired account is not described in the help centre, which is itself something to keep in mind before you load large amounts.

The minimum top-up is $10, and there is no published maximum beyond the daily and monthly limits in the fee table.

Paying with it every day

Three of the four big mobile wallets work with Travel and Premium, and two work with Subscriptions. On Travel and Premium you get Apple Pay, Google Pay, Alipay, and WeChat Pay. On Subscriptions you get Google Pay and Alipay. The Apple Pay point matters in particular, because adding a tokenised card to a wallet is the only way most people tap a virtual card in a shop, and the help centre warns that the wallets are restricted in some countries, Russia among them.

What the card can do online is broader. Travel and Premium cards do not work for ChatGPT or Claude, but the Subscriptions tier does, and the “Subscriptions” name is a hint at what the tier is for: a card you keep loaded just for the small, fixed monthly payments you do not want on a normal bank statement. The virtual number, expiry, and CVV work at any checkout that takes the network on the front of the card.

What the card will not do is just as long a list. Money transfers, quasi-cash (crypto purchases, e-wallet top-ups), financial services, securities, gambling and lotteries, utilities, pharmacies, oil and fuel, some game-key sites, and 18+ content are blocked. The blocked list is not an accident: it tracks the merchant category codes that the issuing banks have decided not to support, and the same MCC can behave differently across tiers. If a payment is important to you, try the smallest amount first, and keep the receipt.

Wayment’s own application is the Telegram bot @WaymentBot and the web cabinet at wayment.net/cabinet. There is no App Store or Google Play listing, so “the app” is the bot, and that is also where you freeze the card, change limits, and raise support requests. The card can be frozen and unfrozen at any time, which is the basic safety net; you should freeze any card you are not actively using.

There is no cashback and no rewards programme. What you do get is a $10 welcome bonus per card and a $5 referral bonus for each card issued by an invited friend, paid in the same internal balance as everything else on the card.

Disputes are run on Wayment’s terms. Standard refunds are not issued; the help centre only commits to looking at cases where the fault is Wayment’s, on an individual basis through support. For a failed payment, the hold returns automatically; if it does not, you contact support with the card, the service, the amount, the date, and screenshots. There is no published time frame for resolution, and there is no chargeback process in the way a Visa or Mastercard bank card would have. That asymmetry is normal for a prepaid virtual card, but it is also a reason to keep the balance low.

What can go wrong

The risk picture is shaped by what is not published, not by what is.

The company is LVLUP LIMITED, registered in Hong Kong as 77106962, with an address at 7/F MW Tower, 111 Bonham Strand, Sheung Wan. That is a typical holding-company structure for a small crypto-adjacent product, and it is not a regulated bank. The card itself is issued by a Singapore bank on the Subscriptions tier and an Armenian bank on Travel and Premium; neither bank is named on Wayment’s pages, and no licences are listed. If you have a complaint that the bot cannot resolve, your next step is an issuing bank whose name you may not know, in a country whose complaint system you may not have access to.

I looked for complaints and did not find a clear picture. There is no Trustpilot page for Wayment in the languages I checked, which is normal for a Russian-only service. The aggregator crmindex.ru shows 5 ratings from 11 reviews, with no visible text in the snippet I could read. Wayment’s own pages display its own ratings: 4.9 on Yandex Maps, 4.9 on Exnode, 5.0 on Otzovik. A Russian catalogue, 1000bankov.ru, shows 4.5 from 898 votes for the site as a whole, not for the card. None of these are independent card-quality reviews, and you should read them as marketing. The site claims 10,000+ active users and 15,000+ cards issued, both of which are unverified.

Custody is the practical risk. The balance is held by Wayment, on the issuing bank’s books, behind a Telegram login. If LVLUP LIMITED were to fail, the funds in custody would be part of the estate, not a segregated client account you could simply reclaim. Two-factor authentication is not stated in the help centre; freezing the card is. There is no mention of fund segregation or safeguarding, and no insurance for the balance.

Operational risks are smaller but real. The help centre treats the absence of a country list and the absence of a citizenship rule as features, which means a future policy change can remove you as a customer without you having moved or done anything wrong. The card network itself can suspend a programme: that has happened in the past with crypto cards, and when it does, new loads stop first and spending stops a few weeks later. The card does not give you any special protection if that happens; the question is how fast Wayment can repatriate the remaining balance, and on that the help centre is silent.

One more thing to keep in mind: the card is USD-denominated, so if you top up in rubles, you are exposed to the service’s internal rate. The “typically up to 2%” conversion loss is the published band, and the rate on the day you top up is the rate you get, not the rate on the day you spend.

What to take instead

If you are reading this, you probably want a virtual card for paying foreign services from Russia, and you want it to work without a passport. The closest alternatives are Azul Card, Telecard, and OnCards. They differ in regulatory cover, fee shape, and top-up routes, and the comparison below is meant to be read alongside the Wayment facts above, not as a replacement for them.

A few things stand out when you line them up. Wayment is the only one of the four that does not require identity checks, which is a real edge for the audience it is built for. Azul Card has the cleanest published fee structure, but the country list excludes Russia entirely. Telecard has the broadest published feature set and the most transparent fee table, but it expects identity verification and a $99 minimum to activate, and it charges 0.5 USDT in gas per transaction. OnCards is the lightest on published information, which is itself a reason to be careful.

If the no-KYC angle is the whole point, the realistic alternative set is small, and Wayment is the most visible option in that niche. If you can pass an identity check and you want a more regulated product, Telecard is the more conventional choice, and Azul Card is the cleaner crypto-funded option for an audience that can use it.

Who I would recommend it to

Wayment is a niche product, and the recommendation is narrow.

It is for you if you are a user paying foreign services, you specifically need a card without a passport or identity check, you are comfortable with a Telegram bot as your only interface, you do not need a physical card or cash, and you are happy to load small amounts at a time. The Subscriptions tier is for the $5 to $30 monthly bills; Travel is the general-purpose tier; Premium is for the ruble-to-USD rate on larger top-ups.

It is not for you if you need cash, a physical card, a card that works in a phone wallet everywhere you go, a regulated EU or US bank behind your balance, chargeback rights in the conventional sense, or any fee structure more transparent than “up to 2%” on conversion. The absence of identity checks is the feature, and it is also the ceiling.

The honest summary is that Wayment does what it says, at the price it says, and the price is higher than it looks once you count the per-payment fees and the conversion band. If you fit the niche, that is a known and contained cost. If you do not fit the niche, the same money buys a more conventional card with more protection, and you should probably spend it there instead.

Frequently asked questions

What is Wayment card?

Wayment is a Russian-language virtual card service run from Telegram. You register through the @WaymentBot, pick a tier, and receive a virtual USD card with a number, an expiry date, and a CVV. The card is intended for paying foreign services from inside Russia, and it is sold without identity checks.

How does Wayment card work?

You top up the card through SBP from a Russian bank or with cryptocurrency through the app, the balance is held by Wayment in USD, and you spend the balance at any merchant that takes the network on the front of the card. Travel and Premium tiers also tokenise into Apple Pay, Google Pay, Alipay, and WeChat Pay, while Subscriptions tokenises into Google Pay and Alipay.

Is Wayment a bank?

No. Wayment is operated by LVLUP LIMITED, registered in Hong Kong. The cards themselves are issued by a Singapore bank for the Subscriptions tier and an Armenian bank for Travel and Premium; the issuing banks are not named on Wayment’s pages, and no licences are listed. The product behaves like a prepaid card, not a bank account.

Who owns Wayment?

The operator is LVLUP LIMITED, Hong Kong company number 77106962, at 7/F MW Tower, 111 Bonham Strand, Sheung Wan. Beneficial ownership is not disclosed on Wayment’s public pages, and the issuing banks are not named.

Is Wayment card available in my country?

Wayment does not publish a list of supported or excluded countries, and it does not state any rule about citizenship or residence. The card is sold in Russian, the help centre is in Russian, and SBP top-ups are built for Russian banks. If you can fund a card through SBP or a crypto wallet, you can top it up; whether the card works in your country depends on the network and the merchant, not on Wayment.

How do I get a Wayment card?

You open @WaymentBot in Telegram, register your account, choose Subscriptions at 2,990 RUB, Travel at 3,990 RUB, or Premium at 7,990 RUB, pay the tier price, and the card is issued within a couple of minutes. You can issue up to three cards per account. There is no passport, no identity check, and no physical delivery.

Does Wayment card require KYC?

Wayment states that “no passport or identity verification is required” to register or to receive a card. There are no KYC levels, and the help centre does not describe a verification step at any tier. The only post-issuance information request is an email address, added through the bot.

How do I top up Wayment card?

You top up through SBP from any Russian bank, including from a Russian credit card, or with cryptocurrency through the app. The fee is 0%, the minimum is $10, and the credit usually arrives in a few minutes. Coins and networks for the crypto route are not listed in the help centre; the app shows the available options.

How do I add Wayment card to Apple Wallet or Google Pay?

Travel and Premium cards can be added to Apple Pay, Google Pay, Alipay, and WeChat Pay. Subscriptions cards can be added to Google Pay and Alipay. The help centre notes that Apple Pay and Google Pay are restricted in some countries, Russia among them, so whether a wallet works depends on the country you are in when you add the card.

Is Wayment card safe?

The balance is held in custody by Wayment, not in your own wallet, and the help centre does not mention 2FA, fund segregation, or insurance. You can freeze and unfreeze the card in the bot at any time, and you should keep the balance low. The product is a prepaid virtual card, not a bank account, and you should treat it with the caution that implies.

Content created by the «cryptocardtested» team