The National Bank of Ukraine[1] (NBU) has called on Visa and Mastercard to stop servicing payments cards issued by Russian banks following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“We must prevent the provision of financial support for armed aggression against our state through the cards of the international payment systems Visa and Mastercard. I hope that Visa and Mastercard will make a fair decision for the sake of peace in Ukraine,” NBU governor Kyrylo Shevchenko says.
The call comes as the Central Bank of Russia[2] (CBR) maintains that payment cards, including Mastercard and Visa, issued by six Russian banks that have “fallen under the sanctions of Western states” that include exclusion from the Swift[3] financial messaging service — Sberbank, VTB Group, Sovcombank[4], Novikombank[5], Promsvyazbank and Otkritie [6] — “will work throughout Russia without restrictions” and that “standard contact or contactless payment with these cards is available throughout Russia”.
Cards issued by the sanctioned banks, however, are no longer available for use with Apple Pay or Google Pay, for payments abroad or with “online stores and service aggregators registered in countries that support sanctions,” the CBR says.
Ukraine measures
The NBU has itself revoked the banking licences and “liquidated” two Russia-based banks operating in Ukraine — the International Reserve Bank JSC (owned by Sberbank) and Prominvestbank[7] — and has suspended debit transactions from “the accounts of residents of the state that has carried out armed aggression against Ukraine”.
It has also prohibited the release of cash from client accounts in foreign currency, introduced a moratorium on cross-border currency payments and set a limit of 100,000
