[HN Gopher] MasterCard suspends all services in Russia ___________________________________________________________________ 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? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-05 23:00 UTC)