Calm down with the "world"

Will Visa and MasterCard leave Russia because of the persistence of deputies? Experts explain

Amendments to the Law “On the National Payment System”, which the State Duma is going to consider at the end of July, can jeopardize Visa and MasterCard in Russia, Russian media reported on Friday. According to the newspaper Kommersant, the changes are tightened by the rules of the work of Russian “daughters” of international payment systems (MPS), in particular, prohibiting them to stop calculations on cards of banks that fell under Western sanctions. In this case, Visa, Mastercard, China Union Pay, JCB and other companies will be forced to stop their activities in the country, and Russians will be transferred to Mir cards, which are not accepted abroad.

The Novaya “new” contacted the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on the financial market Yuri Oleinikov, who stated that the media would incorrectly interpret the meaning of amendments and in vain “scare the people”.

- No one prohibits foreign payment systems. They will work completely freely, if they are cobiding ( *joint cards of two payment systems. - *Ed. ), That is, issued by Russian banks. Certain restrictions will concern only cards issued abroad. In addition, the amendments most concern the [payment system] Alipay because the Chinese come to Russia with their cards and use them here. Regulation must be introduced to understand the circulation of money and limit uncontrolled calculations.

The experts surveyed by the “new” experts agree that the simultaneous ban in Russia of international payment systems is unlikely. However, attempts by the authorities to protect themselves from Western sanctions through financial import substitution can lead to side effects for ordinary banking card users. Moreover, Russian deputies can not always explain what and how they are going to regulate.

Maxim Osadchiy

Head of the Analytical Department of the Bank of BKF

- The amendments do not concern cards issued abroad, but cards of foreign payment systems issued by Russian banks. Oleinikov talks about the ban on the operations of Russian banks with foreign payment systems not included in the register of the Bank of Russia. This is a completely secondary question.

EUROFINESS MOSNARBANK has shown that in case of strict sanctions of the Russian Bank of Visa and MasterCard, issued by these banks, the Russian processing center is blocked due to the fact that it does not want to fall under the same sanctions. Attempts to secure Russian banks and holders of Visa and MasterCard cards from the blocking in case of these banks were in vain.

After all, sanctions are distributed as an epidemic - one who interacts with a face that has fallen under sanctions himself risks to be under sanctions. New amendments do not solve this problem. Their adoption can really lead to the outcome of international payment systems from Russia.

Such an outcome will become the next stage in the economic and financial isolation of our country.

The main beneficiary of this innovation will undoubtedly be the NSPK, which so far supplies the Mir cards mainly by state employees. This system has already emitted over 50 million cards.

There is no doubt that the NSPK will be able to fully provide cards of all Russians in the case of the departure of international payment systems. Cobdening Mir cards will allow you to calculate abroad, the question is how fast and how fast the network of partners of foreign payment systems will be able to increase NSPK.

It is also clear that if the NSPK is under tough American sanctions, it will fall into the SDN list, then all these efforts to build a partner network will be in vain. And the Mir cards can only be paid in Russia and the Union states, but there will be no other cards.

Timur Nigmatullin

Portfolio manager of the company "Open Broker"

- Honestly, I do not see any logic in the words of deputies that the amendments will only relate to the cards issued abroad. As far as I understand, the main goal of amendments is to reduce sanctions risks for the Russian economy in the case of restrictions on the main payment systems (VISA and MasterCard) on behalf of the US government.

Conceptually, the idea is that there are separate legal entities that these instructions would not fulfill. But there are no details about how it will work. It is necessary to watch according to the results of the text of the bill, and it will appear only when the relevant committee will discuss amendments.

The problem of sanctions is difficult to solve, if at all possible.

Systems will prefer to leave if the restrictions are too serious.

It is completely incomprehensible why the Central Bank would push the Ministry of Railways to leave the Russian market. The Russian economy is very beneficial for the payment market to be competition, there are low commissions to have an infrastructure service. If the systems leave, then the economy begins to shift in the direction of cash circulation, the share of the gray economy is growing. So the interest of the Central Bank, in my opinion, is that the turnover of non -cash payment funds is constantly growing.

At the same time, the Russian market is not important for the MPS. Of course, in the context of general expansion, it is interesting, but no more than. The Russian economy is 2% of the world, what to talk about here at all.

Stanislav Volkov

Managing Director for the Methodology of the rating agency of the NRC

- Now Russian banks are insured against sanctions using the Mir payment system. All transactions within Russia go through the NSPK, which reduces the risks of information leaks and simplifies transaction translation in the case of a departure from any international system from Russia. Accordingly, the question is what additional protection we want to get.

Of course, we will not achieve the fact that operations on cards that have issued suction banks are undergoing abroad, if not talking about the Mir payment system. As for intra-Russian transactions, you can probably create some additional risks for foreign payment systems-to tax pennies imposed on Russian banks, for example. This bill is aimed at this. The only question is whether this will work.

In my opinion, the threat would have worked if it was, for example, about China. If Visa and Mastercard had a choice, to leave or not from the Chinese market, then greed would defeat. However, since the Russian market is smaller, here this incentive may not work, and with very rigid pressure they can at some point decide to leave.

On the other hand, we understand that since such initiatives appeared, they were most likely discussed in advance with market participants, and some compromise solutions have already been found.

Therefore, I think that the final version of the bill will not entail catastrophic consequences.

It is clear that from the point of view of customers, the instant shutdown of Visa and MasterCard cards will be quite painful. Russians will have to use cash more, pay more commissions for lifting cash and so on. Disasters for the financial system will not happen, because the calculations will be picked up by the NSPK, but for card holders this is a negative scenario.