Mastercard and Visa suspend services in Russia

Mastercard and Visa announce they are to suspend services in Russia

Mastercard and Visa have announced that they are going to suspend operations in Russia, in response to the global call for sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

A statement from MasterCard said, “We have decided to suspend our network services in Russia. This decision flows from our recent action to block multiple financial institutions from the Mastercard payment network, as required by regulators globally”.

Adding, “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”.

Visa has said that it will “cease all Visa transactions in Russia over the coming days. 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”.

In a statement, Al Kelly, chairman and CEO of Visa Inc., said, “We are compelled to act following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and the unacceptable events that we have witnessed”.

He continued, “We regret the impact this will have on our valued colleagues, and on the clients, partners, merchants and cardholders we serve in Russia. This war and the ongoing threat to peace and stability demand we respond in line with our values”.

Mykhailo Fedorov, the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, earlier in the day shared a letter on his Twitter account from Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal. It stated that Paypal will also be suspending its service in Russia, while “enabling our customers and our global employee community to support efforts to provide humanitarian relief in Ukraine”.

As reported by CNN, these joint actions came as a result of a Zoom call made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this Saturday morning, in which he urged a crackdown on commercial transactions, as reported by pcmag.com.

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