Qiwi is a Russian payment service built in 2007. Since 2007, the company has been steadily growing its client base across Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, and Romania. The company Qiwi Ltd is based in Nicosia, Cyprus.
At its core, Qiwi is an electronic wallet like Skrill and Neteller. It works in the identical fashion as the two wallets – you open an account, top the wallet, and use it for purchases online. It’s literally a wallet that is online instead of a physical form, which is great if you enjoy paying for stuff online (i.e., without using cash).
Besides being a wallet, Qiwi also offers a range of special services. The best and most important is a downloadable app, built both for Apple and Android devices. Furthermore, Qiwi is linked to Visa, which greatly expands its customer base and market outreach. Visa actually is the sponsor of Qiwi wallet, and that actually gave the wallet a great reputation in the outside world. As Visa is a global service provider, being linked to it gives a company a lot of room for expansion and certifies its accountability.
The official website of Qiwi reveals that this Russian wallet works via online top-ups, as well as manual top-ups via kiosks. At the moment, there are over 120,000 kiosks across Russia where you can recharge your Qiwi wallet. Charging it is easy, but taking money out of the wallet might be a trickier thing. Please consult the official company website for advice on how to withdraw money from the wallet.
Qiwi currently caters to 32 million users per month, with 18.1 million active wallets.