Sobinbank on Friday stopped all external payments in foreign currency, making an exception only for the Kazakh tenge, reported . the press service of the credit institution

In order to protect corporate clients of Sobinbank from unfair actions of foreign financial institutions, the bank stops all external payments (crediting and transfer) in foreign currency (except for the Kazakh tenge), the press release says. The document emphasizes that the bank continues to work with the national currency of the Russian Federation – the ruble.

Sobinbank asked clients to refrain from making payments in foreign currency to accounts opened with the bank and to inform counterparties and partners about this. The bank's press service explained that it was making this request in order to avoid blocking funds in foreign currency on the Sobinbank correspondent account. And she assured that these changes in the bank’s work will not in any way affect the fulfillment of its obligations to clients and partners. Sobinbank promised to fulfill all these obligations on time and in full.

At the end of March 2014, Bank Rossiya, which controls Sobinbank, announced that it was abandoning settlements in foreign currency and would carry out only ruble transactions and only on the domestic Russian market. After this, Sobinbank made a similar appeal to clients, but did not inform about the refusal of foreign currency payments.

Rossiya Bank, owned by Yuri Kovalchuk , came under US sanctions on March 20. Then the international payment systems Visa and Mastercard, without notice, stopped conducting transactions on the cards they issued, as well as on the cards of the subsidiary Sobinbank. The latter restrictions were subsequently lifted.

At the end of 2013, Sobinbank took 89th place in terms of assets among Russian banks in the Interfax-100 ranking. Rossiya Bank takes 15th place in this ranking.

Sobinbank limited payments to rubles and tenge