Both payments processors had previously announced that that they would stop doing business in Russia. But their cards still work within the country, because Visa and Mastercard were forced to switch to Russia’s domestic payments-processing system in 2015.

Why should we care?
The Russian Government built out its National Payment Card System (or NSPK) in the wake of its invasion of Crimea in 2014. After sanctions at the time left hundreds of thousands of people without functional cards supplied by Visa and Mastercard, the Kremlin realized that its payments networks were vulnerable to foreign intervention. Laws passed in 2015 forced Visa and Mastercard to process domestic transactions in Russia through the NSPK, rendering the companies’ withdrawal in 2022 an issue for international payments, but not for domestic transactions. The NSPK also created its own card network, Mir, in 2015; the network now handles more than 95 million cards. While Visa and Mastercard’s withdrawal from Russia may have affected trust in centralized payments networks, it’s also possible that their departure will shore up support for domestic alternatives like Mir, encouraging a centralized, isolationist approach to payments.