Vercel has not accepted Russian cards since 2022, and the workarounds keep breaking one by one. Here is every remaining payment route, its real risk — and what to do if your project is already in production and the charge fails today.
Vercel collects money through an international payment provider. Cards issued in Russia are declined before the charge ever reaches Vercel: the provider reads the issuing country from the card BIN and refuses. The error reads «Your card was declined» even though the card and its limits are fine. Mir cards do not work at all — they have no international route.
A card from Kazakhstan, Armenia, Georgia or Kyrgyzstan usually clears. The payment still originates from a Russian IP, and a mismatch between card country, billing address and connection country is a standard trigger for a manual account review. There is no way to predict in advance whose account gets flagged.
Both sit on top of the same card. PayPal has not served Russian accounts since 2022, and Apple Pay forwards a token for the very same card, so the decline arrives for the same reason. Changing the payment method inside Vercel does not change the issuing bank.
Services that issue virtual foreign cards charge 5-15% on top-ups and have unpredictable lifetimes: a card can stop clearing after the next rules update from the payment network. Tolerable for a one-off charge, dangerous for a production subscription — the failure lands during an automatic renewal, not at a moment of your choosing.
A Russian legal entity cannot put a Vercel subscription in its books: the invoice comes from a foreign entity, the payment is in foreign currency, and there is no act or VAT invoice in the Russian format. Even when the charge physically clears, accounting cannot record it and the bank's currency control will ask for grounds.
Vercel does not switch the project off the same minute, but after several failed charges the account is restricted: new builds stop first, then the project goes read-only. Domains keep pointing at Vercel, so the site technically stays up — you just cannot update it any more.
A sequence that removes the risk in one evening and does not depend on getting a charge through.
Make sure the code lives in your own Git repository, not only inside the Vercel integration. Export the project's environment variables separately: they exist nowhere else, and a locked account will not give them back.
A plain Next.js, Vite or Node project moves without edits. Check only the platform-specific parts: serverless and edge functions, Vercel KV, Vercel Blob, Edge Middleware, analytics. The list of things that need a replacement is usually one or two lines long.
Dada Cloud connects the same GitHub repository, builds it and hands back an HTTPS URL. Billing is a Russian card, with proper documents for a legal entity. The free plan is enough to confirm the build and the running app before you touch the live domain.
While DNS points at Vercel, the site keeps serving from there. You check the new URL, then change the A record — the switch takes minutes and so does the rollback. Only after that do you shut the Vercel project down.
What actually happens with each option and why it is risky for a production project.
| Payment route | What happens | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Russian bank card (Visa/Mastercard/Mir) | Declined by the payment provider | Does not work at all, no workaround |
| CIS bank card (KZ, AM, GE, KG) | Usually clears | May trigger a manual account review and document request |
| PayPal | Not available to Russian accounts | Does not work |
| Virtual card via a reseller | Clears while the card lives | 5-15% fee, failure lands on auto-renewal |
| Payment from a Russian company | Technically impossible | No contract, act or VAT invoice in the Russian format |
| A Russian platform (Dada Cloud) | Russian card or company invoice | Proper documents, renewals do not break |
So the decision is made with open eyes, not on a marketing promise.
On Dada Cloud an app runs as a long-lived container service. Function logic moves into a normal API route inside the app — not much code, but it does have to be rewritten.
Code runs in one place, like a regular self-hosted Next.js. For a Russian audience that usually wins on latency; for a worldwide one it loses.
There is no managed KV store: databases mean managed PostgreSQL, and key-value means your own container. Files go to the platform's S3-compatible object storage.
Pull-request preview environments exist and are free, but they are enabled by a label on the PR rather than automatically for every branch.
No. Mir has no international payment route, so the charge never reaches Vercel — it is declined by the payment provider.
A VPN only changes the visible IP address, while the card is declined by the issuing country. So it does not help with payment, and it adds a mismatch between card country and connection country, which is itself a reason for an account review.
New builds stop first, then the project goes read-only. The already deployed version keeps serving for a while, but you cannot update it, and access does not come back without a successful charge.
The free plan is meant for non-commercial projects and is capped on traffic and build time. As soon as the project makes money, the terms require a paid plan — and you are back to the payment problem.
Vercel does not accept crypto directly. Services that advertise it are resellers issuing a virtual card, with the same risks: fees and a sudden decline during auto-renewal.
If the project does not use edge functions or Vercel KV, the move is connecting the repository and copying environment variables — minutes. The longest part is usually verifying the new URL before switching the domain.
No. The free plan needs no card: connect a repository, build the app and open it on the HTTPS URL you get, so you can compare it with the current Vercel deploy.
Yes, domain and hosting are separate. While the A record points at Vercel, traffic goes there; once the new URL checks out you change the record, and the rollback works the same way in minutes.
Create an account and deploy your first app. The Free plan costs $0.