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Russia Calls for Visa and Mastercard Exit After Cards Stop Serving Original Function
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Visa and Mastercard should leave the Russian market because they no longer perform the functions they previously provided, a senior Bank of Russia official stated on May 25.
Alla Bakina, head of the National Payment System Department at the Russian central bank, addressed the matter in remarks reported by state news agency RIA Novosti.
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"Of course, these cards should leave our market. They neither carry out nor perform the function they always provided," Bakina stated.
Visa and Mastercard suspended their operations in Russia in March 2022 following the launch of Moscow's full-scale war in Ukraine.
The move severed the international network function that previously allowed Russian-issued cards to operate abroad and foreign-issued cards to operate domestically.
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Domestic transactions on existing cards have continued to be processed through Russia's National Payment Card System (NSPK), but the cross-border functionality that defined the two networks ended.
According to Russian media outlet Gazeta, on February 10, Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets, suggested that Moscow could offer its domestic Mir payment system to European Union countries as an alternative to Visa and Mastercard. He stated that such a proposal would depend on sanctions against Russian banks and the NSPK being lifted.
Meri Valishvili, an associate professor at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, told Russia’s Prime news agency in late January that Visa and Mastercard cards still used in Russia offer weaker fraud protection than domestic alternatives.
She advised holders to consider replacements. Russia's Federal Financial Monitoring Service, Rosfinmonitoring, is also due to obtain access to data from the Mir system and the Faster Payments System (SBP) in September.
The push to remove Visa and Mastercard fits a broader Russian pattern of cutting Western technology and services out of the domestic market while tightening state oversight of communications and payments.
The Russian government introduced a ban on the import of foreign satellite communication equipment, including SpaceX's Starlink terminals, on April 30, requiring state approval of any frequencies used by foreign space-based communication systems.
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