This is ridiculous action from visa and mastercard. Goverment make taking more than 10k $ cash abroad illegal and another strike come from payment systems.
Whats the plan, do they want to trap most talented and qualified specialists from Russia here? And cut off any oppotunity for us to make world better in tech companies across the world? This make relocation extremely hard!
Corporations’ actions are very questionable. No one inside Russia will notice the effect, only those who relocates.
This already provoked mass cash withdrawal by people in Georgia and Armenia. No one benefit from this
It's a funny turn of events. I know plenty of companies that were sunk by arbitrary fines from Visa and Mastercard in the past (whole IPSPs tanked because of ridiculous and ill motivated fines).
Sure sucks to be on the receiving side of something like this. The only thing this will do as a result is to slightly increase Visa and Mastercard fees.
One way VISA/MC could strike against this law is by simply cutting off all Russian cc's. That would hurt them as well but they could simply stop doing business there for a week or so. I think that Putin would very quickly recant once it becomes evident how much of the Russian economy is now dependent on such instruments.
The new Russian owned payment system is dead in the water from a non-Russian perspective, the only reason VISA and MC are so popular in Russia is because people do not trust local alternatives, not because they don't have other options.
Is this a joke? Russia literally restricted foreign currency usage, you can't get USD with you anywhere and you can't transfer it overseas. And no-one is able to use banking obviously. I bet in other countries there are the same issues and many people are unbanked.
I wonder how to square with the fact that continuing to do business in Russia would mean continuing to pay taxes, that would fund a war-waging government.
Maybe they can point Russians to an online store outside Russia's jurisdiction. Sadly for the ordinary Russian, Visa and MasterCard have also disabled the ability to use their cards overseas (within Russia it seems they outsourced the processing to a Russian company, which is still functioning).
This particular move does not affect people living in Russia, Mastercard will continue to work within Russia as before. It only punishes people who escaped Russia and foreigners in Russia.
What a clickbait headline :-) I'm in Russia, and I confirm that major retail chains limited sugar and flour sales (as I witnessed today in some big chain supermarkets, you can buy no more than 2 pounds of sugar or no more than 20 pounds in another one, this figure vary), but that's due to many small stores are buying in large quantities and then resell for more money. It was somehow mitigated by not allowing more than a 10% margin from yesterday. If you're an owner of a small store and they catch you, you can get a hefty fine.
But I still got my Starbucks Nespresso capsules today for the same price I got 'em half a year ago, and there's no panic and not many people in supermarkets. Visa/Mastercard is working inside Russia as usual. We have our own financial messaging system. I think local banks are celebrating that they don't have to pay any fees to Visa/Mastercard anymore.
My personal qualm is with Paypal. I have a niece in Ukraine (she is a Ukrainian citizen and was born in Ukraine). Last week my only way to help her and her 2 daughters were to send money via Paypal (All transfers between Russia and Ukraine stopped working on March 1st. Her husband is stuck in Moscow and can't return for now). But now Paypal stopped working in Russia. And the funny thing is less than 1% of the population uses Paypal here. Many don't know a bit about it. Local payment systems like Qiwi and ?money are widespread and popular.
I urgently left Russia with almost no cash; this morning, after reading the news from Mastercard, I miraculously managed to withdraw about 3k, but I don't know how to adjust my life in the future yet
To get a job, I need more documents than I managed to take with me, so for now the only source of income remains in Russia, but how to use it is a huge problem (not to mention the exchange rate due to which my salary decreases every day)
It's already clear that Visa/MasterCard will be a key part of US sanctions against Russia so this is partially a pre-emptive strike. I generally doubt it's going to work out though.
My partner is Ukrainian and apparently the Crimeans which were recently annexed and now have to switch are utterly shocked by state of e-banking at their new Russian banks; which doesn't bode well for their efforts...
You're completely missing the point here. Have you read the article?
"The law on a national payment system, which seeks to guarantee uninterrupted service of payments in Russia by foreign payment systems and prevent them from cutting services to Russian clients, as Visa and MasterCard did in response to U.S. sanctions in March."
Visa and MasterCard cut their local intra-Russian services "because of the U.S: sanctions"(!) Note that both these named Visa and MasterCard aren't "American Visa and MasterCard." The ones operating in Russia had to be registered as Russian companies to provide the services at all. So it's Russian companies (they are daughter companies, but legally independent except for brand, initial investments, connecting to the international infrastructure etc) cutting their own services to Russians because of the external political influences.
It's totally reasonable to adjust the laws to make it harder for such Russian companies to do such things in Russia.
I am one of these Russians. Or should I say I was, because just moments ago Visa and Mastercard stopped all operations in Russia, and this essentially left us without any money except the (meagre) cash we could withdraw back in Russia.
It really feels the trap is closing in around me right now.
First, this move by Visa and Mastercard did nothing internally, all the Visa and Mastercard issued cards will work due to local processing center. Absolutely zero impact for poor people who shop in Pyaterochka and then go home to watch TV propaganda for a leisure. Only educated people abroad (foreign students and runaway workers) will suffer.
Second, gov media spins these measures and gains more support internally. Their approval ratings now skyrocket because they have invested years into building vision of enemies who want to hurt through sanctions. Common people now run to them in fear and agree to trade even more of their freedoms for “protection”. Just open up the list of laws introduced over the past week, and see for yourself.
The Visa and MasterCard named in the article must be Russian-based Visa and the Russian-based MasterCard. They operate under the Russian laws, pay Russian taxes, otherwise wouldn't be able to operate there. They made themselves unreliable by, per article:
"cutting services to Russian clients (...) in response to U.S. sanctions in March."
So it's the opposite of your claim 1). The answer to your claim 2) is that the given money amounts "equivalent to the value of two days of (their) transactions processed in Russia."
Your claim 3) is confusing. Visa and MasterCard are already de-facto standard: they "together service about 90 percent of payments in Russia."
A little background on why the cards won't stop working in Russia.
After first sanctions due to Crimean & Donbass conflict started rolling out in 2014, Russian gvt saw the writing on the wall and gradually strong-armed Visa & MC to move all the local transaction processing to ???? (National System for Payment Cards).
Here's some more info on this (you can use Google Translate):
> Also I'm not sure I'd call it a sanction since it's coming from a private company, not a government.
It's following sanctions, which blacklist all big Russian banks and remove them from international banking and financing arrangements. Even if Visa/MasterCard aren't explicitly prohibited from dealing in Russia, how are they supposed to move money around with the sanctions in place? It's because of the sanctions.
> If I were any country right now I'd also take it as a warning to not depend on Mastercard or Visa given the immense power they hold
They can try not invading other countries, that seems to do the trick. Joking aside, countries like France have their own independent networks ( Carte Bleue in France) over which payments pass in some scenarios ( honestly couldn't tell, but for instance there are weird cards from some banks that only work on the CB network and don't outside of France, even if they're supposedly Visa/MC).
>... bank cards issued in Russia would no longer work abroad, while cards with the companies’ logos on them were expected to continue working inside the country because a local processor handles those transactions.
Essentially, people in Russia are not affected, but fleeing journalists and activists who are facing 15 years prison sentences because of the new "fake news" laws and were planning on continuing their work from abroad now can't even pay for their food and accommodation.
> Also Visa and MasterCard services are absent in Russia as of today
I'm not sure if this is quite the case - can anyone confirm? Their statement seems to muddy the issue but I believe they have only stopped working with sanctioned banks.
> MasterCard/Visa cards issued in Russia will not work abroad, cards issued abroad will not work in Russia.
So it does nothing then. So russians will be able to use visa/mastercard within russia? They just won't be able to use it outside russia. And foreigners can't travel to russia and use visa/mastercard.
How many russians are going to travel to another country and use visa/mastercard in the near term? How many foreigners are going to travel to russia to use visa/mastercard in the near term? Now compare that to russians using visa/mastercard in russia. I'm guessing that's 99.99% of russians with visa/mastercard.
Just like with SWIFT "ban", it's all for show. The SWIFT ban doesn't affect russian banks tied to oil/gas trade. How convenient.
Whats the plan, do they want to trap most talented and qualified specialists from Russia here? And cut off any oppotunity for us to make world better in tech companies across the world? This make relocation extremely hard!
Corporations’ actions are very questionable. No one inside Russia will notice the effect, only those who relocates.
This already provoked mass cash withdrawal by people in Georgia and Armenia. No one benefit from this
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