Settlement balance: Apple Gift Card sales increased more than 10 times
Sales of cards and App Store replenishment codes increased more than 10 times in April compared to the previous months of the year, sellers told Izvestia. A lot of demand arose after payment for purchases in the app store from mobile operator accounts became unavailable in the Russian Federation. The potential audience of such services reaches 6 million Russian users, experts estimate. According to them, it is necessary to purchase cards and codes with a mark-up of 25-30% of face value, while maintaining a high risk of fraud. Experts consider the refusal to pay via mobile accounts to be an ineffective measure: users quickly switched to alternative methods.
How much demand has increased for payment cards in the App Store
After the shutdown in the Russian Federation of payment for purchases in the App Store from mobile operator accounts, the demand for gift cards for the app store increased sharply, in April 2026, sales increased 11.5 times compared to the period from January to March, M.Video told Izvestia.
— The main demand was for replenishment cards from the USA — they accounted for about 99.7% of all category sales in April. Users also purchased them from Turkey, India and Poland, the company said.
They added that Russians are actively using this method as a convenient alternative to paying for services without having to issue foreign bank cards.
From mid-April to early May, weekly sales of codes in restore: pay.digital increased 2.5 times, Roman Romensky, Vice President of consumer Electronics at Inventive Retail Group and CEO of restore: told Izvestia. According to him, the demand for payment for services that have left Russia is also growing, but it is the Apple app store that is the driver.
— This is due to the huge user base of Apple devices in our country, which has been left without an affordable way to replenish. We are confident that sales volumes will continue to grow. Given that demand has already grown without promotion, with the start of active awareness, we expect a new surge in sales and in the number of users," he believes.
At Wildberries, sales of Apple gift cards in April showed extremely high growth rates — 830% in turnover. If we compare this month with March, then this indicator is also extremely high — 140%. The average check was about 2.5 thousand rubles, RWB (Wildberries&Russ) told Izvestia.
According to Eldar Murtazin, a leading analyst at Mobile Research Group, sales of such cards in the first quarter of 2026 in the Russian Federation amounted to only 15 thousand units, and in April they soared to 500 thousand — an increase of more than 20 times.
At the end of March, mobile operators warned subscribers that they would no longer be able to pay for applications and subscriptions in the Apple app store from personal mobile accounts, and recommended replenishing the service's internal wallet in advance. Sources in the telecom market claimed that the restriction was introduced at the request of the Ministry of Finance. Later, the American company announced that it would retain access to the iCloud+ cloud service for Russian users after the end of the paid subscription period. In addition, iPhone owners were allowed to change the region ID in the device settings, which allows them to link bank cards from other countries and top up their account with foreign gift cards.
Payment restrictions affected the most sensitive usage scenarios — the smart home and health-related functions, IT expert Sergey Pomortsev told Izvestia. According to him, in Apple Home, some of the capabilities depend on cloud services, which causes users to lose remote access and stability of automation, and in Apple Health, despite maintaining basic data collection, integration with paid applications is limited. The expert emphasized that although the basic functionality remains available, users are deprived of a number of advanced features — synchronization with medical applications, analytical tools, which ultimately reduces the value of these devices for regular health monitoring.
Canceling payments for purchases in the app store is a completely pointless step, says Denis Kuskov, CEO of TelecomDaily. According to him, it is almost impossible to influence Apple, which voluntarily withdrew from the Russian market in 2022, and its revenues from Russian payments remain insignificant. At the same time, users themselves quickly adapted to the new conditions: some purchase gift cards and deposit codes, others use foreign bank cards. As a result, this measure has brought nothing but problems that can be solved, the expert believes.
What problems do buyers face?
According to the Mobile Research Group, there are now about 15 million iPhone users in Russia, of which about 6 million are actively using the App Store, and about 3 million paid for purchases and subscription renewals through personal mobile accounts. At the same time, according to Sergey Polovnikov, the head of the Content-Review project, the main paying audience of the Apple store is about 100 thousand subscribers who spend $50-100 per month.
When paying with Apple gift cards, users are also forced to overpay, Eldar Murtazin noted: they, as well as codes, are usually sold at a margin of 20-25% of face value, and in some cases it reaches 50%.
— At the same time, there is a high risk of encountering scammers: they have already mastered this niche. A person finds a card at an affordable price on the website or in the Telegram channel, sends money to the seller, but receives nothing in return," the expert noted.
As Vladislav Shelepov, a GSOC threat analyst at Gazinformservice, previously told Izvestia, attackers use both bots and "air sale" schemes, sending already used codes or disappearing altogether after payment. In addition, the Regional Public Information Technology Center (ROCIT) warned about mass mailings with urgent calls to "unblock payment", as well as about fake sellers in messengers and social networks who disappear after receiving an advance payment.
According to Sergey Polovnikov, since 2022, the purchase of gift cards has become widespread — they are purchased by users of services that left Russia and disabled payment acceptance. However, the situation with Apple is different: people have a lot of subscriptions tied up, which makes it necessary to regularly top up their account with significant amounts.
— Most foreign Internet services can be replenished using their own gift or foreign bank cards. The savings will be up to 30%. But many people who are used to convenient one—stop-shop payments just don't always think about it," he added.
At the same time, as the expert concluded, users of Apple services will still have to replenish their account with gift cards in the future.
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