[HN Gopher] MasterCard suspends all services in Russia
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MasterCard suspends all services in Russia
Author : bradvl
Score : 48 points
Date : 2022-03-05 22:26 UTC (33 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mastercard.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mastercard.com)
| grandpoobah wrote:
| Call me insane, but this feels insane. It would be one thing if
| Visa/Mastercard were being forced to do this, but for them to
| take it upon themselves to "pick a side" during a global conflict
| feels really wrong.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| I'm not pro crypto or pro Russia, but the fact that it's so easy
| to lose ones freedom to transact[0] (regardless of the specific
| merits here) is troubling.
|
| [0]
| https://mobile.twitter.com/punk6529/status/14944446246304030...
| 323 wrote:
| Visa too:
|
| > _Visa Suspends All Russia Operations_
|
| https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.rele...
|
| MasterCard/Visa cards issued in Russia will not work abroad,
| cards issued abroad will not work in Russia.
|
| > _MasterCard /Visa account for three-quarters of payments in
| Russia_
|
| https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/150023911662537932...
| tananaev wrote:
| Interesting that the title says all operations are suspended,
| but description basically says that foreign cards won't work in
| Russia and Russian cards work abroad, but does it mean local
| Russian cards will still work in Russia? That's probably
| majority of transactions anyway. A bit confused here.
| hadrien01 wrote:
| Russia has a home-grown card payment network (Mir) that
| accounts for 25% of payments. It will probably grow because
| of the sanctions.
| 323 wrote:
| The MastarCard statement suggests that Russian cards will not
| work in Russia.
|
| > _we have decided to suspend our network services in
| Russia._
| TarasBob wrote:
| Good.
| 3np wrote:
| ...for bitcoin?
| samwillis wrote:
| Mirror: https://archive.ph/d5RmA
|
| Key passage:
|
| " With this action, cards issued by Russian banks will no longer
| be supported by the Mastercard network. And, any Mastercard
| issued outside of the country will not work at Russian merchants
| or ATMs."
|
| I don't believe it's clear that cards issued in Russia are not
| still being accepted within Russia. Which is what I believe Visa
| is still doing:
|
| " all transactions initiated with Visa cards issued in Russia
| will no longer work outside the country and any Visa cards issued
| by financial institutions outside of Russia will no longer work
| within the Russian Federation."
|
| https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.rele...
|
| If MasterCard is matching Visa it's effectively cross border
| transactions that have stopped - not withdraw access to Russian
| issued cards within Russia.
|
| If they have withdrawn access to Russian cards within Russia it's
| going to put enormous pressure on Russian citizens. Visa and
| Mastercard apparently have 73% of the credit card market in
| Russia. This could be the type of pressure need for citizens to
| push back at the Russian administration (not that they aren't
| already).
| assusdan wrote:
| In Russia, all contry-local Visa and MasterCard payments are
| processed by country-owned NSPK system https://nspk.com
|
| So all local payments will work, but no abroad payments (and no
| foreign cards to pay locally in Russia). Probably, I will lost
| most of my cloud data and compute resources incl. VPNs.
| Fortunately, some providers do accept SWIFT payments.
| 3np wrote:
| So individuals who recently left Russia out of fear for the
| regime and may be in very vulnerable positions have potentially
| unexpectedly lost access to their funds until they can sort
| that out...
|
| Meanwhile, for The Real Russians, business as usual.
|
| This looks like theatre hurting the wrong people.
| savant_penguin wrote:
| "We're undergoing site maintenance. But don't worry -- as there's
| no impact to your ability to make Mastercard purchases or
| payments"
|
| Unless you're Russian I guess.
|
| As much as I enjoy the act this could backfire as a show of the
| tremendous power these companies have: shutting down credit card
| payments will likely impact large portions of online payments.
|
| But at the same time every extra inefficiency in the Russian
| economy could translate into less bullets going to kill
| Ukrainians
| youngNed wrote:
| > shutting down credit card payments will likely impact large
| portions of online payments.
|
| I can't think of a way to reply to this without being trite or
| insulting, but genuinely, what do you think is the point of a
| sanction?
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| As far as I can tell, this will mainly have an impact on people
| trying to leave, because payments within the country will still
| work (if probably badly because the substitute system is shoddy),
| only the Russian government doesn't allow leaving with more than
| the equivalent of 10k USD in cash (since several days ago) and
| most other money transfer companies are refusing service as well.
|
| So, previously the locals working for the companies who valiantly
| declared their condemnation of Putin by shutting down their
| Russian branch had three choices: work for a company that _does_
| support Putin, leave, or starve. Now it's just work for a Putin
| supporter or starve.
|
| (Not entirely true because at least some of them put their
| employees on paid leave for now, but that's still probably what
| it will ultimately boil down to in the relatively near future.
| Passenger planes being arrested in foreign airport because of
| sudden lease termination is a similar one-two punch combo with
| Putin's closure of the land border since 2020: it's getting very
| hard--and expensive--to physically leave even if you don't want
| anything to do with this shitfest and never did.)
|
| Good job..?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Do companies of this size already have the infrastructure built,
| a kill switch of the sorts, to turn off an entire country's
| payment system? I'm thinking not just technology wise, but also
| things like existing subscriptions and contractual legal stuff
| between countries, customers, etc. It seems like a monumental
| undertaking to integrate payment systems for a new country,
| turning it off seems even more impressive.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| Sanctions aren't new, any sufficiently large international
| company likely has dealt with this before. And it doesn't
| happen all at once, you start by turning off new registrants,
| then you go through records of existing entities that need to
| be turned off and turn them off, then you continue to watch for
| whatever you missed.
| lil_dispaches wrote:
| I don't think this is act of war protest. These corporation
| know the inside score, they help write the narrative. I predict
| these companies are giving up Russia for good. This is a signal
| of a long term shift in world order and these corporate boards
| know it, because they engineer it with policies and propaganda.
| unpopularq88 wrote:
| [deleted]
| ls15 wrote:
| What else are they supposed to do?
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(page generated 2022-03-05 23:00 UTC)