Translated material
The State Duma approved the transfer of state employees to Mir cards
The State Duma at the meeting on April 21 adopted in the third reading a bill , which provides for the transfer of all budget and social payments to cards of the National Payment System "Mir" since 2018.
All 354 deputies who were present in the hall voted for him. The broadcast of the meeting was conducted on the website of the parliament. The state employees who refuse to receive payments to Mir cards will be able to receive them in cash through the cash desks.
Amendments to the legislation also suggest that the number of participants in the national payment system will be expanded at the expense of foreign banks, international financial organizations and the State Corporation VEB. Such a step, as noted in the explanatory note, "will ensure the expansion of the Mir cards and the possibility of their emission abroad."
On February 22, the bill was adopted in the first reading, on April 19 it was approved in the second reading. In mid -February, the document approved the Duma committee on the financial market.
In early February, the head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina said that the regulator will make changes to the bill on the deadlines for the transfer of state employees to Mir cards. New customers of the budget sphere are invited to issue Mir cards from July 1, 2017, and from July 1, 2018, all current state employees, except for pensioners, should be transferred to it. For the latter, the transition to Mir cards should be stretched until July 1, 2020. As the Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank Olga Skorobogatova assured , for all pensioners, the release and reasseme of these cards will be free.
The national payment system was created in Russia in 2014 after Visa and MasterCard for some time refused to serve Russians whose cards were issued by banks that fell under the sanctions of the EU and the USA.