- Visa and Mastercard have joined the sanctions against Russia and have taken their operations in the nation offline.
- The actions of Mastercard and Visa join that of other payment and remittance service providers such as Revolut, Paypal, Remitly and Wise.
Since Russia made the decision to invade Ukraine, the country led by Bladimir Putin has been subject to several sanctions from several countries in the world, which are in disagreement with the nation’s acts of war.
Trying to support these sanctions, various companies have joined efforts to weaken the “Russian bear” that continues to plague Ukraine. An example of this are the payment companies Visa and Mastercard, which recently announced that they have left offline its operations in the world’s largest nation, in response to its decision to invade Ukraine.
Visa and Mastercard disconnect their services in Russia
Visa indicated that the pertinent measures have been taken and carried out to carry out this.
“All transactions initiated with Visa cards issued in Russia will no longer work outside the country and Visa cards issued by financial institutions outside of Russia will no longer work within the Russian Federation”, This was indicated by the payment processor.
Visa Inc CEO Al Kelly stated that he deeply regrets the collateral damage of this decision, as it not only affects the Russian government, but also Visa’s Russian partners, customers and cardholders.which have little or nothing to do with the war.
For its part, Mastercard announced the same decision to disconnect its services within Russia.
“For more than seven days, the world has witnessed the atrocities that have been carried out on Ukrainian territory by the Russian armed force”, the firm said in a statement.
In addition, the consortium added to its statement that in recent days it made the decision to block various financial institutions in its payment networkin accordance with the requirements of the regulatory bodies, in addition to specifying that the plastics issued by the financial institutions of Russia will no longer have compatibility with the Mastercard network, in addition to the fact that any Mastercard card issued outside the Russian territory will not work in shops or ATMs in that country.
President Biden applauds Visa and Mastercard measures
In this regard, Joe Biden, current president of the United States, applauded the decisions of Mastercard and Visa, through a telephone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine.
Similarly, it was announced that the US government is increasing economic, humanitarian and security assistance to Ukraine, while collaborating with Congress with the firm aim of securing additional funds.
President of Ukraine requests assistance
The recent decisions of the large financial consortiums Visa and Mastercard are not fortuitous, since they respond to a call for help from the Ukrainian chief executive to take offline the transactions of their credit and debit cards issued by Russian banks.
This request was made by the President of Ukraine, in order to increase the sanctions that the world is imposing on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
It should be noted that heThe actions of Mastercard and Visa join that of other payment and remittance service providers such as Revolut, Paypal, Remitly and Wise, consortiums that have also indicated their position and dislike for the Russian invasion, disconnecting or restricting access to their services to Russian users.
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