Russia launches national banking card processing system
Xinhua, April 1, 2015 Adjust font size:
The Russian National System of Payment Cards (NSPC) formally started operations on Wednesday, the country's central bank said.
"The process of connecting banks to the NSPC operational and clearing center in the framework of the MasterCard system has been completed," NSPC head Vladimir Komlev was quoted as saying by the TASS news agency.
The NSPC was created as a response to U.S. sanctions, which in 2014 barred the MasterCard and Visa payment systems from serving their clients in Russia.
In March 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country would create its national payment system to secure smooth operations of local banks.
MasterCard will provide its operational services and payment clearing services for domestic transactions across Russia through the NSPC processing center, while Visa is to complete the work on joining the NSPC in the next few months.
The number of banking cards in circulation in Russia exceeds 227 million, with more than half of the cards carrying a Visa logo, and 102 million plastic cards out of the total amount were issued by Sberbank, Russia's largest bank.
Russia's central bank has said that cardholders will notice no difference after the switch of transactions from MasterCard and Visa to the NSPC. Endi