How to withdraw more cash from an ATM in Russia

How to withdraw money from a foreign bank card in Russia

You need to remember the following nuances:

• limit on cash withdrawal at foreign ATMs set by your bank
• limits of ATMs themselves in the Russian Federation
• your bank's commission for withdrawing cash abroad
• local ATM commission in the Russian Federation
• do you want to withdraw rubles or currency?

In addition, there may be simply unforeseen circumstances – for example, I have two cards from different foreign banks, with one of them I can withdraw cash without any problems, and the other does not withdraw cash at all – regardless of the amount.

If you want to withdraw currency (not rubles), then you need to try to find such ATMs, especially if you live in a small city. Let's talk about withdrawing rubles.

To find out the limit of your bank for withdrawing cash from foreign ATMs – see the descriptions of your tariff, each bank has its own value, even for one bank this value may differ depending on the selected tariff. For example, my bank has 100 thousand baht (about 3.2 thousand dollars) limit.

Your bank's commission for cash withdrawal abroad is again individual, for example, for Thai banks it is 100 baht (about three dollars).

The commission of a local ATM in the Russian Federation – in those ATMs where I withdrawn cash, there is no commission, as it were, but, most likely, it is simply included in the currency conversion rate.

Limits of ATMs of the Russian Federation for withdrawing cash from a foreign card

Actually, this is the same information, because of which I began to write this article – it was this information that I lacked most of all. Because I needed to withdraw a large amount from a foreign card, but visiting an ATM takes time, and for each operation the commission is 100 baht, so I had to withdraw the largest amount possible.

Limit on cash withdrawal from a foreign card at Sberbank (Сбербанк)

At present, only 7 thousand rubles can be withdrawn from a foreign card at Sberbank ATMs (previously there were only 5 thousand rubles).

Limit on cash withdrawal from a foreign card at the Moscow Industrial Bank (Московский индустриальный банк)

The limit for withdrawing money from a foreign card has not changed for a long time and is 20 thousand rubles.

Limit on cash withdrawal from a foreign card at VTB (ВТБ), Otkritie (Открытие)

VTB and Otkritie banks are partners and clients of any of these banks can withdraw cash from an ATM of any partner bank without commission. By the way, there are several more banks in partnership, here I mention only those whose ATMs I used.

At VTB ATMs and Otkritie Bank, you can withdraw 100 thousand rubles at a time. More precisely, you can withdraw 100 thousand rubles at a time only if the ATM has five thousandth banknotes, since the maximum number of issued banknotes is 40. That is, if the ATM has only thousandth banknotes, then you can only withdraw 40 thousand rubles. But if you don't care about the commission, you can repeat this operation two and a half times.

By the way, you can withdraw 100 thousand rubles again only the next day. Moreover, you are remembered not only by a particular bank, but also by all its partners. For example, if you withdraw 100 thousand from VTB and immediately go to the ATM of Otkritie Bank with the same card, then it will not give you money.

UPD: I wanted to add a link to the list of partner banks, but did not find any information on the official website – only outdated data on third-party resources. In general, perhaps something has already changed.

Limit on receiving cash from a foreign card at Tinkoff bank

In my city there are a couple of Tinkoff ATMs and I had special hopes for this bank – they write that the bank is advanced, that there used to be many ATMs with dollars, and so on.

Do you know what is the limit for withdrawing cash from a foreign card at Tinkoff ATMs? I don't know either, the fact is that this “advanced” ATM cannot work with PIN codes longer than four digits. Yes, for Russian cards, a four-digit PIN is usually set, but for my Thai cards, the PIN is six-digit. You know, Sberbank ATMs can accept a six-digit pin code. All other ATMs mentioned can accept a six-digit pin code. Absolutely all payment terminals in any Russian store can easily accept a six-digit pin code, but Tinkoff’ ATMs cannot. Shame, shame.