VISA: New U.S. Sanctions Don't Affect Operations in Russia

MOSCOW--The fresh round of U.S. sanctions against Moscow won't affect operations of card giants Visa and MasterCard in Russia, the two companies said Thursday.

A few Russian banks faced disruptions with bank-card payments with Visa and MasterCard in March this year, after the U.S. enforced sanctions in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea. To prevent it happening again the Russian parliament passed a law forcing the two companies to keep hundreds of millions of dollars at the Bank of Russia as collateral against any future freeze.

This time the card companies are sticking to a more careful approach.

"The new sanctions package does not affect Visa operations in Russia. We keep on processing transactions in a normal mode," a spokesman for Visa said Thursday.

MasterCard also continues to operate in the same manner as before the recent sanctions, Russian agencies reported.

The government has already indicated that the laws relating to how Visa and Mastercard operate will be amended and the level of requirements and restrictions will be lowered significantly.

The central bank stands ready to provide any necessary liquidity to the banking system which has been troubled by the recent addition of state-run Gazprombank being added to the new sanctions list. However, new sanctions against Gazprombank aren't as harsh as they were previously. The latest penalty only limits the bank's ability to borrow abroad. Previously, the list already had Bank Rossiya and its affiliated partner SMP, which were banned from the global banking system, as their foreign accounts were frozen.

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