Visa Suspends All Russia Operations
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Press release: https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.rele...
Mastercard too: https://www.mastercard.com/news/press/2022/march/mastercard-...
VISA: > Once complete, all transactions initiated with Visa cards issued in Russia will no longer work outside the country and any Visa cards issued by financial institutions outside of Russia will no longer work within the Russian Federation.
They very specifically state that Russian cards won't work outside the country and foreign cards won't work within Russia. But there's no mention of local cards and local transactions. I assume this means that Visa will continue to operate within the Russian silo.
MC: > With this action, cards issued by Russian banks will no longer be supported by the Mastercard network. And, any Mastercard issued outside of the country will not work at Russian merchants or ATMs.
Mastercard, on the other hand, says that any Russian-issued card will no longer be supported by the "Mastercard network". This sounds like they are disabling all Russian Mastercards, period.
The distinction is very important. Siloing Russian cards to work only within Russia would surely be annoying but not catastrophic. Completely cutting off access, on the other hand, is a huge fucking deal.
After I typed that I went looking for Visa vs. Mastercard market share numbers to get an idea of what impact there would be from just one of these shutting down.
Looks like Russian banks have already been working to get ahead of this by partnering with China's UnionPay, which I hadn't even heard of.
https://www.russia-briefing.com/news/russia-s-sovcombank-par...
>Siloing Russian cards to work only within Russia would surely be annoying
I guess it depends. I can't use my card on foreign websites. I can't use it abroad.
IMHO, that's more than annoying for me.
There is a reason lots of countries urged their citizens to get out earlier.