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- Correction of the message: tourists from the Russian Federation cannot log in to the services required in China
Correction of the message: tourists from the Russian Federation cannot log in to the services required in China
Tourists from Russia are faced with the inability to use a number of necessary services in China, including the payment systems AliPay and WeChat, as well as airline resources. Users report this on thematic forums. According to them, registration SMS messages from China do not come to Russian numbers — without them, for example, it is impossible to issue temporary bank cards. Problems in receiving SMS codes affect not only subscribers of Chinese services. Experts note that the reason may be the complication of filtering systems and the strengthening of rules for checking messages for malicious content. Often, the codes are sent not directly from the service to the user, but through aggregator companies, to which filters are particularly strict. About what other services are experiencing problems with SMS delivery and what are the ways to solve them — in the Izvestia article.
Which Chinese services can't Russians register on?
Tourists from Russia, whose number increased significantly after the cancellation of visas by the Chinese side in September this year, faced partial or complete inability to use the key online services of China. This is reported by numerous travelers on social networks and on thematic forums. According to them, Russian phone numbers do not receive SMS messages with codes for registration in the popular payment systems AliPay and WeChat.
In addition, users note that it is impossible to receive the service messages necessary to manage bookings of Chinese airlines, including Air China and China Southern Airlines. The codes are required, in particular, for online registration, seat selection and other operations, one of the tourists explained.
It is extremely difficult to travel in China without AliPay and WeChat — these services actually perform a role comparable to using bank cards and SBP in Russia, said Sergey Polovnikov, head of the Content-Review project. According to him, without WeChat, for example, it is impossible to purchase tickets to visit Tiananmen Square in Beijing and a number of other popular attractions.
You can register in payment systems with a Visa or MasterCard card from a foreign bank (since 2022, these systems do not work in the Russian Federation), or with a passport. However, the procedure is lengthy and complicated, and many users do not complete it, he said. In addition, the absence of SMS makes it impossible to issue a virtual card in AliPay, without which it is impossible to transfer funds to the Chinese payment system from a Russian card, the expert added.
Izvestia sent inquiries to Ant Group and Tencent (operators of AliPay and WeChat), as well as to Air China and China Southern Airlines. On the Russian side, the editorial board requested the Ministry of Digital Affairs, as well as the press services of four domestic mobile operators.
However, as Izvestia found out, not everyone has problems with SMS delivery and not always. So, a Megafon subscriber managed to obtain an authorization code in AliPay without difficulty this week.
Meanwhile, Chinese payment systems and airline resources are not the only online services that Russian users cannot access due to the lack of SMS messages. At the end of October, messages with codes stopped coming from Telegram and WhatsApp (owned by Meta, a company recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation). After that, messengers introduced alternative authorization methods for users from Russia: phone calls and sending codes by e-mail. Telecom operators and digital companies have not yet given official explanations of the reasons for these failures. Previously, Russian users of Google services faced similar problems with SMS authorization.
How can the problem be solved?
In a situation where incoming SMS service messages are blocked, it often does not help to use foreign numbers that Russians use in other countries. With the help of such SIM cards, in addition to access codes from foreign services that refused to work with the Russian audience, users from the Russian Federation receive authentication to foreign bank accounts and more. But since the beginning of October, this channel has also stopped working: SMS messages have stopped coming, several users of such Sim cards told Izvestia.
According to them, SMS messages from Czech, Israeli, and Georgian operators stopped being delivered while roaming in Russia (however, delivery partially resumed for some subscribers in the first decade of November). Some users managed to avoid such problems, but most still encountered interruptions.
— From personal experience of the last few days, I received confirmation SMS messages from Kazakhstan and Turkey without any problems, — said Leonid Konik, a partner at ComNews Research. — But taking into account the numerous filters and security settings that Russian mobile operators have been forced to add recently, any type of communication can fail.
Previously, some market participants attributed problems with SMS delivery to the adaptation of Russian operators and debugging of IT systems that provide a "cooling period" for foreign SIM cards included in Russian roaming. According to the rules that came into force in early October 2025, such subscribers' access to the Internet and SMS should be blocked for 24 hours. However, the new practice is still being tested, according to sources in the communications market.
In general, the problem with SMS delivery is due to the fact that in Russia, China and a number of other countries, more and more filters are being introduced at the state and telecom operator levels to protect users from fraud and unwanted content, Sergey Polovnikov explained. According to him, subscribers from European countries, in particular, are experiencing difficulties with SMS authorization in Chinese services.
— In most cases, service SMS messages with the sender's letter designation are sent not by the companies themselves, but through mailing aggregators, which are often located in third countries. When such a message passes through anti-fraud systems, it can be interpreted as sent by an unknown source, which means it is potentially fraudulent or contains malicious content," he explained.
According to the expert, the situation could be fixed by an agreement between Russian telecom operators and Chinese digital services on direct SMS transmission, bypassing intermediaries. Such a mechanism would make the filters work more correctly and would allow subscribers to avoid problems, the specialist notes.
Numerous traffic filtering systems do indeed often block SMS messages from legitimate services from friendly countries, agrees Denis Kuskov, CEO of TelecomDaily. According to him, debugging and ensuring the correct operation of these mechanisms is a matter of time. The establishment of direct SMS channels could solve the problem with their delivery: this issue can be resolved through a dialogue between regulators, telecom operators and digital services from different countries, the expert concluded.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
