Russian banks are switching to the Chinese payment system

In the statement made by Sberbank, Russia's largest bank, it was stated that it has started to work on issuing cards that will work with the Russian payment systems Mir and UnionPay. Alfa-Bank, an important bank in the country in terms of market volume, said in a statement that it has started to work on issuing cards that work with the Chinese national payment system, UnionPay, and that payments can be made in 180 countries with the said system. The Russian Tinkoff bank also announced that the work on the "Mir-UnionPay" cards is continuing rapidly. US-based financial services companies Visa and Mastercard announced yesterday that they are suspending their operations in Russia.

Russian Mir and Chinese UnionPay systems

The Mir payment system, established by the Central Bank of Russia in May 2017, is used for electronic money transfers through the bank's National Card Payment System. UnionPay, a China-based bank card services network, partners with more than 2,500 institutions worldwide. It is calculated that more than 7 billion cards have been issued within the scope of UnionPay to date.