The Russian analogue of the international payment systems Visa and Mastercard – "Mir" – crashed. The domestic version had to abandon large-scale plans for global expansion, and the Russian authorities can boast of the success of the system only within the country. Moreover, officials are forced to hastily look for alternatives to Mir cards abroad, so that Russian citizens have the opportunity to pay at least somehow and somewhere. Bloomberg writes about this, citing sources close to the Russian establishment and the Bank of Russia.
The agency notes that out of nine countries where the Russian payment system worked, in six local banks decided to refuse cooperation due to too high a risk of sanctions. Moreover, even those countries that Moscow considers “friendly” refused to support, the agency notes. Sources of the publication claim that the Bank of Russia was not ready for such a level of pressure and is now forced to hastily look for at least some alternatives. The agency also notes that if many countries are trying to circumvent trade sanctions against Russia, then cooperation with the Mir system demonstrates real fears of secondary sanctions on the part of Russia's partners and the power of US and EU influence.
“In terms of compliance issues, it is difficult to determine whether the user of this card is subject to sanctions or not,” Bekhzod Khamraev, deputy governor of the Central Bank of Uzbekistan, explains the actual joining of the sanctions against the Russian payment system.
In addition to Uzbekistan, Turkish, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Vietnamese and Kazakh banks refused to cooperate with the Mir system. Partially, only Armenia, Belarus and Kazakhstan retained work with the system, the section with foreign partners of the system has already been removed from the Mir website. The President of the Russian Association of Electronic Money and Money Transfers, Viktor Dostov, links the refusal to cooperate with too high risks and too low benefits from maintaining relations with the Mir system.
“Concerns about secondary sanctions outweigh interest in fee and commission income,” he says.
Now the Bank of Russia is focused on finding alternatives, however, according to the agency, it will probably be impossible to find a single solution, since only local solutions will be created for Russians who still plan to travel abroad, like the cooperation of some Turkish hotels with Russian companies — conductors of payments to Russian banks. There will be no new countries cooperating with the Mir system, the publication is sure.
