American sanctions against the Russian MIR payment system “rolled over” to Russia’s “friendly” countries. After Turkey, several banks in Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Vietnam suspended the service of Russian cards. According to media reports, so far we are talking about several specific banks, but it is not clear how the situation will develop further.
Thus, in Kazakhstan, work with “MIR” cards was “temporarily suspended” by the People’s Bank of Kazakhstan, which is the country’s largest bank. According to the information of RIA “Noviny”, the service of cards in ATMs has been suspended, however, the bank serves “SVIT” cards in standard mode when paying for purchases and services.
In turn, Vesti.az reported that Armenia also refused “MYR”. Banks in this country have allegedly stopped serving Mir cards, cardholders cannot transfer amounts to cash at ATMs.
“Izvestia” added that the service of “MIR” cards was also refused at the Vietnamese bank BIDV. It should be noted that in Vietnam, cards were accepted by two banks – the second of them was VRB, which is part of the general system.
It should be noted that the main reason for such steps on the part of these banks is considered by experts to be threats of sanctions. On September 15, a document of the US Treasury was published, according to which the US is ready to introduce sanctions for supporting the use of the Russian NSPK system and the national payment system “Mir”. Part of Turkey’s banks were the first to refuse to service Russian cards, followed by “friendly countries”.