I can answer you this question from first hand experience. My wife is Russian and we spent lots of time in Russia and we have been to St. Petersburg in May this year.
First I want to give you some general advices. In Russia you can practically everywhere with your card and contactless. I have not once encountered a situation where you could not pay with MasterCard or maestro. Maestro is even wider spread in Russia than MasterCard. There is almost never a minimum amount you have to pay and no matter if big or small shop they all accept card payments. Even at ATMs you can withdraw money via NFC contactless.
So now my first advice dress very very warm because St. Petersburg is windy as hell. I have never been to a place as windy as there. Not even Chicago was that cold. Even though weather may be sunny the wind is gonna but you and it’s gonna hit you freezingly hard.
My second advice DO NOT PAY with your main card from your main bank account anywhere. AT ALL. I guarantee you that your card informations will be fished and three to four weeks after your trip to Russia someone will try to withdraw money from your account and make some online payment or whatever. I promise you this will happen. That’s why you never ever want to use your main credit/debit card there. Just use one that you only use for trips abroad and lock the card after your trip. I have been to Russia so many times and it happened to me like 5 or 6 times that someone fished my informations and tried to use my card for some payments. Just use one of the extra bunq cards, set low limits for that card and lock the card as soon as you leave Russia and change the pin code once you don’t need it anymore. If you don’t I promise you someone will steal money from you.
Now about bunq does it work or not? Well that’s very hard to answer because we had lots of trouble during our first two days and then none in the last days. Contactless did not work at all during the first two days same goes for normal payments. With my N26 card I had no issues at all. On the third day the bunq card did work suddenly and nfc as well. ATM withdrawal always worked. I really cannot explain why the bunq card was declined so many times but keep that in mind it is very likely to happen and you should have some cash or backup creditcard that actually works. And you can only withdraw 5000 rubles in ATMs that’s the limit per withdrawal. So keep that in mind as well.
If you have any further question feel free to ask me.
