OREANDA-NEWS. The Bank of Russia sees no reasons for leaving Visa and Mastercard from Russia after the adoption of the new amendments on payment systems, the press service of the Central Bank said in the Russian media.

“The amendments are aimed at ensuring compliance of the activities of all payment system operators with Russian legislation. We are sure that all payment systems will work as they did. Like today, domestic Russian card transactions, including cards of international payment systems, will be processed by the National Payment Card System within the Russian Federation, and operations outside the country by international payment systems, ”the Central Bank notes. “We see no cause for concern”, the regulator’s press service added.

Earlier, the Russian media reported that foreign payment systems may stop working in Russia because of the amendments that were proposed in the State Duma to the law “On the National Payment System”. The publication wrote that the work of international payment systems in Russia may be prohibited if they violate the new rules of Russian legislation and suspend the calculations of a bank, for example, because of sanctions. The author of the bill, the head of the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market, Anatoly Aksakov, told the newspaper that the amendments were needed “in order to prohibit any payment systems to prescribe in their rules the possibility of disconnecting Russian banks from conducting card settlements”.

In turn, Visa has previously responded that it intends to continue to ensure the smooth operation of the payment system in Russia, since the Russian market is strategically important for the company. The representative of the payment system stressed that the company “doesn't comment on third-party judgments about possible future events, based on assumptions and expressing the author’s personal position of opinion”. Mastercard didn't respond to the media request.