The service of transfers for individuals from their accounts in Sberbank to Chinese Alipay wallets has stopped working, Kommersant reports.

A representative of Sberbank noted in a comment to the newspaper that the service of replenishment of Alipay wallets was realized in partnership with Western Union (WU) and stopped against the background of the termination of WU in Russia.

“Demand was high, it was used to transfer funds home by numerous Chinese working in the eastern part of Russia, as well as Russians within the framework of the so-called gray imports to pay for deliveries of small batches of goods from China,” – said the source of the edition.

According to analysts, the volume of money transfers by individuals from Russia to China before the imposition of sanctions reached $1 billion a year, more than half of which was accounted for by Sberbank. With the introduction of sanctions, the possibility of dollar transfers for Sberbank was closed.

The e-wallet service Alipay was considered an alternative to account-to-account transfers. Sberbank launched money transfers to China by phone number on February 1, 2022.