MasterCard says it has reached an agreement with Russian authorities to process its payments in Russia, the Russian central bank announced on Monday.
MasterCard and Russia’s national payment system agreed on December 30th to gradually
MasterCard agrees to process transactions in Russia
move the processing of the US company’s transactions within Russia under the roof of its Russian counterpart, the central bank said. The Bank of Russia will act as a settlement office – reports the WSJ.
The move comes some months after the first Western sanctions hit Bank Rossiya, which the US Treasury Department said is a personal lender for senior Russian officials. After a sanctions-related issue with Visa and MasterCard, Russia’s lower house of parliament said that all the payment transactions in the Russian Federation should be processed within the country.
But both Visa and MasterCard said they would like to continue operations in Russia, and are now in cooperation with the Bank of Russia.
A Russian finance minister official told The Wall Street Journal last May that the government wanted to create a payment system akin to the existing systems in France and Turkey. In those two countries, global card providers work together with their local peers, processing transactions together.
The post MasterCard agrees to process transactions in Russia appeared first on Payments Cards & Mobile.
