Updating Envato’s position on the war in Ukraine

Envato Announcements
169

I’d like to add more detail to Hichame’s statement at the top of this thread – specifically focusing on how each payout option has been affected.

Existing sanctions and actions by payment providers have effectively closed our ability to pay via SWIFT and Paypal to all Russian banks, and Payoneer to sanctioned banks. Envato’s action adds to this, by removing payments after the 26th of March to unsanctioned banks through Payoneer.

Set out below is more detail on each available payment option prior to the 26th:

  1. PayPal – PayPal ceased operations in Russia in early March 2022. This removed this payout method as an option for our authors.

  2. SWIFT – Envato attempted payouts via SWIFT on 15th March 2022 and all payouts to Russian banks were rejected, regardless of the sanction status of the bank. Intermediary bank(s) within the payment chain are preventing payments from being completed.

Reattempting these SWIFT payments will result in additional rejections, with the added risk that the affected payouts may be absorbed in the payment chain and may not be recovered. This is not a risk we are willing to take with our author payments.

  1. Payoneer – Currently, Payoneer is only available to existing users (i.e. Payoneer is not accepting new registrations) and payouts will only be completed to a select number of non-sanctioned banks. As the situation is evolving rapidly, this list of sanctioned banks is growing.

From March 26th, Envato is effectively extending the above to no longer support payments through Payoneer to unsanctioned banks, in line with our position that we will not be making payments to Russia-based financial institutions.

We understand that this has a significant impact on our author community and the decision was a difficult one. Our intent is to prevent funds from entering the Russian financial system, and not to target individual creatives that reside in Russia.

As we mentioned yesterday, if your payout destination is to a non-sanctioned bank located outside of Russia, we can still facilitate your payouts. If this applies to you, please contact our Envato Author Support team immediately for assistance.

7 Likes