My wife just arrived in Canada from Russia, she intends to use her bank card to purchase some stuff. However her bank sends her security SMS to confirm that her purchases are genuine, and for some reason, she doesn't receive those text messages but receives local text messages. Has anyone here found any sort of workaround to this type of issue?
How to receive SMS from home country?
- Thread starter Bynming
- Start date
Is she still using her Russian sim card? That should work in Canada, although not 100% reliability and not cheap. (Russian phone account must be paid up)
Other suggestion would be see if the bank will let the confirmation code be received through bank app.
Last suggestion unfortunately is do bank transfer from her bank to new Canadian account and use that.
Or ask the bank to send to her Canadian number. We had that working for a similar transection (a money transfer not a bank card purchase) via a bank in Hong Kong. And there were mutliple confirmations (via SMS, then App...etc) . They are willing to use a Canadian number for the SMS confirmation (I think you may have to call them to set it up or already have the number in the account record).
She has tried both her Russian and her Canadian sims. The Russian one has terrible reception. We're thinking of doing a bank transfer, I assume that's not a simple matter though sadly...
We did that but weirdly it doesn't come through. Might be an issue with our provider though, they're new and buggy.... Hopefully it gets sorted out.
We get SMS to our MegaFon SIM cards with no problem. We're in Toronto.
You're probably better off opening a Canadian bank account and transferring the funds there, to be honest. The fee for international purchases is almost 10% with Russian bank cards.
You're probably better off opening a Canadian bank account and transferring the funds there, to be honest. The fee for international purchases is almost 10% with Russian bank cards.
Depends on the bank, but usually it is possible, even just online. One note is that may be better to transfer to a US dollar account than a Canadian dollar account (fees higher and/or exchange rate worse, Russian banks may effectively charge two conversion fees). Most Canadian banks will let you open a US dollar account. Also a question of whether to do ruble/dollar conversion in Russia (i.e. US dollar account with Russian bank) and then send, because Canadian bank may not do a ruble/dollar conversion at a decent rate. Anyway don't want to overexplain, you get the idea.
Of course, depends how much it is, if a smallish amount may not be worth the trouble.
I'm super late to the topic, but wanted to add some thoughts on accessing Russian bank accounts from Canada in general, not necessarily in response to the OP's specific question of approving purchases made with Russian cards - in case somebody else would find it useful later:
I pretty much gave up on my Russian bank accounts for exactly this reason: there is no reliable way for me to interact with the bank, apart from calling them and jumping through all the hoops with waiting on the line forever and then identification (keep forgetting the stupid code word every time).
One option would be to maintain your Russian phone number, and use it to receive those text messages. But you have to keep an eye on that phone number, making sure it doesn't get deactivated due to inactivity.
The ideal option would be to update your phone number with the bank and have them send the text messages to the Canadian number. I tried doing that a couple years ago while in Russia (Alpha and Sber) - and were told in both banks that password text messages can only be sent to Russian cell phone numbers. I'm not sure if the restriction is technological or legal, or if it is still in place, but the fact is, two years ago you were not able to do it.
The third option, which is what I did, is to have a mobile app installed on your phone (assuming all the functionality you need is available within the app, and you don't need text messages). I made sure my app was fully set up/activated while in Russia, while having a Russian SIM card in the phone.
This worked for some time, though what's interesting, it only worked if the phone was on WiFi - seems like it realized I'm in Canada when on cellular network, and that made the apps freak out, but they didn't (or couldn't) do the same checks while on WiFi.
But eventually there was an app update that I had to install, and the app required a text message password after the update - so that's where it all broke down.
All in all, it's just not worth the headache to maintain long-term, unless you have to for some reason, so I'm planning to close my Russian bank accounts when I'm there next time.
I pretty much gave up on my Russian bank accounts for exactly this reason: there is no reliable way for me to interact with the bank, apart from calling them and jumping through all the hoops with waiting on the line forever and then identification (keep forgetting the stupid code word every time).
One option would be to maintain your Russian phone number, and use it to receive those text messages. But you have to keep an eye on that phone number, making sure it doesn't get deactivated due to inactivity.
The ideal option would be to update your phone number with the bank and have them send the text messages to the Canadian number. I tried doing that a couple years ago while in Russia (Alpha and Sber) - and were told in both banks that password text messages can only be sent to Russian cell phone numbers. I'm not sure if the restriction is technological or legal, or if it is still in place, but the fact is, two years ago you were not able to do it.
The third option, which is what I did, is to have a mobile app installed on your phone (assuming all the functionality you need is available within the app, and you don't need text messages). I made sure my app was fully set up/activated while in Russia, while having a Russian SIM card in the phone.
This worked for some time, though what's interesting, it only worked if the phone was on WiFi - seems like it realized I'm in Canada when on cellular network, and that made the apps freak out, but they didn't (or couldn't) do the same checks while on WiFi.
But eventually there was an app update that I had to install, and the app required a text message password after the update - so that's where it all broke down.
All in all, it's just not worth the headache to maintain long-term, unless you have to for some reason, so I'm planning to close my Russian bank accounts when I'm there next time.
Weirdly enough, my wife managed to get it sorted out. To my surprise, Tinkoff contacted her to tell her they were experiencing routing issues and that everything should now be in order. And indeed it was. She now gets notifications on her phone and is able to confirm her transactions.
All the same, we're in the process of getting her a Canadian bank account.
Thanks to everyone who responded!
All the same, we're in the process of getting her a Canadian bank account.
Thanks to everyone who responded!
