October 19, 2016, 11:44 pm / Finance

Payment systems are trying to return money to customers due to Ukrainian sanctions

Western Union and MoneyGram will remain the only way to transfer money Anna Eremina The National Bank of Ukraine has banned the operation of Russian payment systems since Wednesday / E. Razumny / Vedomosti

On Wednesday, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) ordered banks and non-banking institutions to stop working with Russian payment systems due to the sanctions introduced on Tuesday.

We are talking about six systems: Anelik, Blizko (Svyaz-Bank system), Kolibri (Sberbank system), Unistream, Zolotaya Korona and Leader. In total, at the end of June, 35 payment systems were operating in the country, 14 of them were created by non-residents.

Market participants said that already on Wednesday the systems had to return to clients part of the funds that were accepted but could not be issued on the territory of Ukraine. “We receive a lot of calls to the call center,” says Vedomosti’s interlocutor, adding that it is not so easy to return funds to clients; some may come for them in a month. “Money that passed through us, but was not paid to clients in Ukraine, will be returned to clients,” reassures a representative of the Leader payment system.

Now payment systems are canceling accepted payments that they cannot send to Ukraine, and notifying clients that they can withdraw their funds, says Zara Srapyan, general director of the BEST payment system (her system worked in Ukraine through partners). According to her, there are many such translations and this is a big burden. Most likely, she suggests, citizens will simply switch to payment systems operating in Ukraine, but perhaps Russian players will work through partners.

Now the only way for citizens to transfer money will be the American systems - Western Union and MoneyGram, a representative of Leader points out.

Russian systems were not registered in the NBU register anyway, NBU employee Elena Makhaeva said on Wednesday. After the events of March 2014, the NBU decided to re-register the systems according to the new rules; the systems provided documents, but the NBU did not make a decision on inclusion in the register. As a result, the systems were unable to register new settlement banks in Ukraine: for example, the revocation of the license from RSB 24, which was the settlement bank of the Contact system in Ukraine, deprived it of the opportunity to directly operate in this country. Now Contact works through partners. The Central Bank did not respond to Vedomosti’s request.

A representative of Unistream said that the company was studying the situation; Zolotaya Korona and Kolibri declined to comment; Blizko and Anelik did not respond to the request.