By Alexander Kolyandr
MOSCOW--A number of further Russian banks faced problems with
international payment systems Visa Inc. (V) and Mastercard Inc.
(MA) Friday, as the U.S. placed sanctions on Bank Rossiya in
connection with the annexation of Crimea.
Visa and Mastercard said they will stop servicing Bank Rossiya
and three more banks connected with it--Sobinbank,
InvestCapitalBank and SMP Bank.
"In order to comply with the U.S. law Visa International Service
Association is obliged to cancel access of those banks to Visa
network", Visa said.
Mastercard issued a similar statement.
The holders of these banks' cards can't pay for goods and
services using their cards, but can use the cards to withdraw cash
from the bank's ATMs or ATMs of other Russian banks serviced by the
United Payment Service, also known as ORS, a national net which
unifies dozens of banks.
The ORS spokesman said the system is servicing all the cards
without exception.
However, more banks are affected by the payment systems'
decision, as the affected banks were processing transactions for
third party banks.
FinService Bank said it's Visa and Mastercard cards aren't being
accepted by retailers, as its cards were processed by one of the
affected banks.
Visa said the problems may extend to shops and services which
used the affected banks to process card payments.
The full list of banks and retailers that may face difficulties
isn't available.
Alexander Shokhin, who heads the Russian Union of Industrialists
and Businessmen said the banks affected by Visa and Mastercard
decisions should either change the owners, or switch to other
payment systems.
Parliament's Head of the Financial Markets Committee Anatoliy
Aksakov told Prime news agency the banks may solve the problem by
moving to the China UnionPay system.
Russia has long been considering the creation of a national
banking payments system, but hasn't developed it yet.
Write to Alexander Kolyandr at alexander.kolyandr@wsj.com