After the events in Ukraine in February of this year, Russia faced an unprecedented exodus of IT professionals. Last but not least, this is due to sanctions against banks and the inability to continue working for foreign customers. Georgia has become one of the most popular destinations for relocation, and there are at least several reasons for this:
territorial proximity, you can even get there by bus;
Russians do not need a visa to Georgia;
without a visa, you can live in Georgia permanently, only once a year crossing the border with any neighboring state;
there is no language barrier, a wide Russian-speaking community, about a third of local residents are fluent in Russian. In Batumi, this figure is even higher.
According to the Georgian Interior Ministry, 90,000 Russians entered the country in March and April, and by June, half of them had left for other countries. Thus, about 45 thousand citizens of the Russian Federation “settled” in Georgia, and this is not such a small figure for a country with a population of ~ 3.7 million people (excluding Abkhazia and South Ossetia). The sharp influx of Russians quite naturally led to many significant and not very changes in everyday life.
This spring, it became much more difficult for citizens of the Russian Federation and Belarus to get a bank card in Georgia. Back in early February, it was possible to come with a passport to a branch of any major bank and leave from there with a multicurrency plastic card in half an hour. Making a card did not cost anything, or some symbolic amount.
At the end of February and beginning of March, due to the excitement that arose, a real “circus” began. The situation changed every week and is still changing. In some cases, they began to require additional documents (for example, an employment contract), in others they began to take 50 lari (~ $17) only for considering an application for opening an account with a 50/50 probability of a successful outcome. If your application was evaluated positively, then you need to pay another 50 or 150 GEL on top for opening an account.
On March 4, TBC (the second largest bank in Georgia) stopped opening accounts for Russians altogether, but on March 16 it changed its mind. There are cases when Russians were not allowed to open multi-currency accounts, that is, they were issued cards only in local currency. Since 99.9% of visitors receive income not in lari, these are fixed conversion costs.
