Crimea - "Peace"?

On the evening of August 14, the media reported that Crimean banks have stopped emission and maintenance of Visa and Mastercard cards

Clients of Genbank (the second largest Bank of Crimea) began to massively complain about the deviation of payments. The press service of the bank confirmed that Visa and Mastersard maintenance were terminated, and advised customers to switch to cards of the Russian Payment System "Mir".

Genbank was the only bank of Crimea that issued and served its own cards of international payment systems. The release, however, was stopped on January 23, 2018. However, customers who have acquired international cards until January 23 promised that they would act "before the expiration of the deadline specified on the map." At the time of publication, the bank’s press service did not respond to the request of Novaya Gazeta about the reasons why the cards ceased to be valid ahead of schedule.

Meanwhile, there is no cessation of Visa and Mastersard service in Crimea. Domestic media masses were mistaken when interpreted a note of the original source - BBC, which said that Visa and Mastersard Genbank, and not Visa and Mastersard, were stopped. For a tourist who gathers on a peninsula with a map of any other Russian bank, everything remains unchanged: to withdraw money in ATMs of the largest Crimean RNKB, Bank of Russia and the same Genbank, it is still possible.

“The media information is incorrect. We do not serve only our customers with Visa and Mastersard cards. Owners of cards of mainland banks can use our services, ”Genbank confirmed at the Call Center.

Visa and Mastersard cards issued on the Russian mainland can still pay for purchases in Crimean stores and cafes. A domestic tourist may not cook cash.

Problems may have foreign guests. So, Novaya Gazeta is known at least two cases when MasterSard cards did not work among the British National Westminster Bank customers. However, the clients of Russian “daughters” of foreign banks (the same “Raiffaisen”) have no such problems.

The Refusal of Genbank from servicing the Visa and Mastersard cards he issued will not hit the Crimeans themselves. The fact is that these Genbank cards, due to sanctions, were previously unsuitable for any calculations abroad, including purchases in foreign online stores. And for purchases in domestic ones, the "world" will also fit.

PS

Officially, neither Visa nor Mastersard in the Crimea do not work. The companies do not get tired of saying that they comply with the sanctions regime. The actual work of the maps of international payment systems in Crimea is due to the transfer of processing centers for servicing intra -Russian transactions to the territory of the Russian Federation. The transition occurred in 2014 at the initiative of the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. “In fact, they work with us without our knowledge,” says the source of “New” in one of the payment systems. - When the NSPK was created in July 2014, we were simply forced to translate domestic operations, including Crimean, to process there. Such was the requirement of the law, otherwise it was possible to lose the entire Russian market. ”