By Andrey Ostroukh
MOSCOW-- MasterCard Inc., an international payment system
company, has reached an agreement with Russian authorities to
process its payments in Russia, the central bank said Monday.
MasterCard and Russia's national payment system agreed on Dec.
30 to gradually move the processing of the U.S. company's
transactions within Russia under the roof of its Russian
counterpart, the central bank said. The Bank of Russia will act as
a settlement office.
The move comes some months after the first Western sanctions hit
Bank Rossiya, which the U.S. Treasury Department said is a personal
lender for senior Russian officials. After a sanctions-related
issue with Visa and MasterCard, Russia's lower house of parliament
said that all the payment transactions in the Russian Federation
should be processed within the country.
But both Visa and MasterCard said they would like to continue
operations in Russia, and are now in cooperation with the Bank of
Russia.
A Russian finance minister official told The Wall Street Journal
last May that the government wanted to create a payment system akin
to the existing systems in France and Turkey. In those two
countries, global card providers work together with their local
peers, processing transactions together.
MasterCard and its peer Visa Inc. couldn't be immediately
reached for comments.
Write to Andrey Ostroukh at andrey.ostroukh@wsj.com
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