Due to international financial sanctions on Russian banks, cryptocurrency exchanges Bybit and OKX have followed in Binance’s footsteps to remove Tinkoff Bank and Sberbank from their P2P transactions list.
According to Russian media outlets, local users can no longer receive fiat currency in exchange for their cryptocurrency on Tinkoff or Sberbank accounts via the P2P platforms OKX and ByBit. In official channels, neither company’s representatives made any official announcements.
OKX still permits users to receive fiat on their accounts at a Russian branch of Raiffeisen Bank and the Russian Standard Bank as of press time. Both financial institutions are not included on the United States Treasury’s list of sanctioned entities.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Binance was listing Tinkoff and Sberbank as transfer methods, which sparked a new wave of attention to the presence of sanctioned Russian banks on crypto exchanges’ payment options.
The official Tinkoff and Sberbank brands were removed from the Binance P2P platform on August 24, but the “yellow” and “green” options representing their brand colors remained. The following day, the WSJ reported that all sanctioned banks had been removed from the list, citing a Binance representative.
Even though they were supposed to be removed, it was discovered that Binance P2P users continue to post advertisements for transactions using “the green bank” as their preferred payment method.
These users may mention other payment methods, such as Russian Standard Bank or Ak Bars Bank, but they specify in the “advertiser’s terms” that they will only accept remittances through “the green bank.”
According to media reports, the same is true for OKX and ByBit, where merchants still offer an exchange option via sanctioned institutions in private communication.
