Paying Phone And Internet Bills In Russia Using Bitcoin Amid Rising Legal Issues

While recent reports suggests that using bitcoins in Russia might be considered as a criminal activity, some popular mobile operators in the country Tele2, Megafon, Beeline and MTS are accepting the digital currency through services such as 7pay.in and Cryptonator.

7pay.in

According to a report from CoinTelegraph, 7pay.in has been operating for three years and offers its customers both a Bitcoin exchange and a service to pay internet and mobile phone bills. It doesn’t hold customers’ Bitcoins, thereby providing additional security. The company claims to have earned the trust of 3416 people from the CIS countries, according to the website.

7pay.in also enables people to view all processed operation statistics on the site, offering extra transparency. Moreover, it is quite simple to use as users are not required to go through registration procedures.

Cryptonator

It is an all-in-one online Bitcoin wallet which supports multiple cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Dogecoin (DOGE) and others. It enables fast and easy direct transactions and allows instant exchange between different cryptocurrencies in one personal account. It offers payment options for online games, such as World of Tanks, Perfect World and others.

CoinTelegraph explains that the service doesn’t make Bitcoin payments directly. It takes Bitcoins and converts it to RUR according to the system’s internal rate and then sends the money to the final destination.

“Cryptonator and 7pay.in services will now allow Russians to be able to pay their bills with bitcoin, however, when the customer wants to pay with bitcoin the service immediately exchanges them for rubles and automatically pays the bill”, Nuno Menezes wrote on Bitcoinist. “The great thing is that the service doesn’t charge extra fees and works pretty fast.”

Bitcoin Status In Russia

Russia has not been particularly bitcoin friendly country as suggested by recent reports. However, the two aforementioned companies believe that making bitcoin payments should be simplified and are enabling these new kinds of services across the country, Menezes wrote.

Moreover, the fact that these services only convert bitcoin into rubles and execute payments by using the Russian currency, provides no reasons for the Russian government to consider it illegal.