The State Duma may adopt a law restricting the use of Visa and Mastercard in Russia

On July 23, the State Duma is going to consider and adopt a bill on amendments to the law “On the National Payment System”, which should not allow international payment systems to execute US and EU sanctions, Kommersant reports.

New provisions of the law “On the National Payment System” may lead to the departure of international payment systems from Russia. The requirements for their subsidiaries in terms of ensuring the continuity of payments, that is, a de facto ban on the implementation of international sanctions in Russia, are impracticable.

As a result of their withdrawal, it will be impossible to accept cards of Russian banks abroad, and inside Russia – to accept cards of foreign banks.

At the moment, subsidiary structures of IPS such as Visa, MasterCard, China Union Pay, JCB, etc. are registered in Russia. They will have 180 days to comply with the law, which the State Duma reportedly plans to adopt in this session.

“The amendments were made in order to prohibit any payment systems to prescribe in their rules the possibility of disconnecting Russian banks from conducting card settlements. We should not encourage such blackouts and tolerate discriminatory rules , ”said the author of the bill, the head of the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market, Anatoly Aksakov,

In theory, if, after a fixed period, the IPU blocks the operations of a bank, for example, because of international sanctions, then they will be given a warning. If it is ignored, the MPS will be removed from the Russian market. Sources of publication in the payment market assure that in this case already issued cards of the system excluded from the registry will continue to work through NSPK. However, there is the opposite opinion.

“If licenses in Russia are revoked from the Ministry of Railways, then for some time all calculations on the cards inside the country will stop. The fact is that today NSPK has contracts not with banks, but with international payment systems, which pay it for processing their transactions within the country. All payment terms, including interbank commissions, are recorded in the rules of international payment systems. And until NSPK concludes relevant agreements with banks, these calculations are unlikely to be resumed , ”says Dmitry Vishnyakov, an independent expert.

In addition, according to the expert, after the adoption of the draft law, the Ministry of Railways will not change the rules of work, and, most likely, will simply wind down their business in Russia, since the proposed rules for them are not feasible from a legal point of view. At the same time, if nothing unexpected happens, payments for already issued cards will pass through NSPK, but MPS cards will not work outside of Russia, as foreign cards of these systems will not work in Russia either.

Blocking VISA and MasterCard can push settlements and purchases in cryptocurrencies between citizens, which will certainly increase Bitcoin sales in Russia and increase its value in the local market.

Publication date 13/07/2019
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