Russian banks rush to switch to Chinese card system | Hacker News Reader

Russian banks rush to switch to Chinese card system

reuters.com

77 pointsLittleMoveBig15 comments

These sanctions will fire back at the West by making America's true rival China more powerful. People smarter than me in the States have been preaching this for years - America can only defeat China if it partners with Russia (i.e., the second and the third against the second). And what we're doing now goes against their wisdom. We gave empty hopes to Ukraine, kept sending weapons during the last 8 years, and now we've abandoned them and pretend to support them with these suicidal sanctions. I heard IKEA is leaving Russia - how does this hurt Russia, really? I saw on the news that Russia continues to import tulips for March 8 but meanwhile they show tulips grown near Moscow for fraction of the price and not any worse (in fact, I've never seen such gigantic tulips before). We saw during the pandemic how much rely on China, and there are other dependencies such us nearly all Americans depending on the generic drugs, predominantly made in India. Just try to imagine if India decides to sanction America and cuts the exports! All these sanctions show one thing - the West does not know the stoicism of Russians! Instead of letting Russians stop this war from inside, now we're making them more united and confirm the mantra that the West persecutes them! Gonzalo Lira just vlogged [1] about it.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjGGkM6TN88

To best if my knowledge USA is not trying to “defeat China” or even Russia. Tame or turn toward liberal democracy is the underlying theme and hope of US policy. American and international corporations drive this policy even more than US government. The hegemony of MacDonalds, Apple, and Starbucks.

Sanctions essential now as an expression of economic force that does not involve direct intervention. Long term consequence or concerns of driving Russia into Chinese arms not a factor yet.

And do you really think China and Russia will get along? That is an odd fantasy.

World liberal democracy was a thing in the unipolar model, which is now officially dead.

China and Russia have been getting along pretty well in the status quo, its not a fantasy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/us/politics/russia-ukrain...

Russia for its survival will have to find one way or other to survive the visa mc shutdown, but the US businesses will also be losers in the long run.

The US is asking it's citizens to leave Russia immediately [0], but having no working MC/VISA is going to make that difficult for anyone without plenty of cash in hand.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2022/03/05/1084762582/russia-ukraine-sta...

> Russia for its survival will have to find one way or other to survive the visa mc shutdown

the “shutdown” is only for payments outside of Russia using Russian cards and internal payments using foreign card. local Russian Visa and Mastercard still work inside of Russia as all their payments go through a local organisation and thus are not impacted. many countries did this in order to protect their payment systems.

Union pay is a debit card system and not credit card system. So I am not sure it will help considering the purpose of credit card usage are different.

Fortunately for Russia debit cards cover 99% of their use cases.

There are also credit cards that use Union Pay. Basically a debit card connected to a credit line. IIRC Union Pay is really the payemnt processor.

Debit is extremely common in Sweden.

I look at that as an advantage. Credit cards just keep a large portion of the population in unnecessary debt. Debit cards are much more logical in almost all situations.

In fact I use my credit card like a 1 month delayed debit card. The line of credit is useless.

> large portion of the population in unnecessary debt.

thereby increasing the money supply and velocity of money. Waiting until you have money to spend it slows everything down.

> Waiting until you have money to spend it slows everything down.

Which is probably a good idea for most people and most situations.

For people need money, credit card is a thing can be helpful at a time and lock them in debt for long term. Most people pay interests on credit card are those you don't want them to be on credit card, poor people.

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