Banks carries Mir to the Crimean peninsula
New payment system will be able to work abroad only together with MasterCard
Seven Russian banks started to work with Mir (Peace) payment system, the Russian alternative to well-known Visa and MasterCard. First of all, it will secure finances of the card holders in Crimea where the world payment systems don't work because of purely political reasons. Olga Skorobogatova, the deputy chairman of the Bank of Russia, and Vladimir Komlev, the director general of the National System of Payment Cards joint-stock company, discussed this topic with journalists, and a correspondent of Realnoe Vremya was among them as well.
Banks carry 'Mir'
Nobody hid political motives of the decision on the launch of the Russian payment system. The very idea appeared after when SMP Bank and Russia bank were sanctioned by the West. Visa and MasterCard refused to work with the cards of these banks. The conversations became louder when the Crimean peninsula was isolated from the world payment systems. Only cards of some local banks were accepted in the shops and cash machines on the territory of the republic and Sevastopol. Technically it was possible to withdraw money using Visa or MasterCard cards, but, as bank employees admitted, it was 'semilegal'. And there was a high risk that an ATM would withhold the card and wouldn't give it back to the owner.
'The aim of the national payment system was, firstly, to provide a possibility of emission of plastic cards and their use in Crimea. On the list of the pilot banks, there is one that has been realizing this task since December. We hope the natives of Crimea will feel safe and confident very soon,' said Olga Skorobogatova, the deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Russia. The Russian National Commercial Bank of Crimea, by the way, is one of the first 'testers' of the new payment system. Apart from RNCB, Gazprombank, MDM Bank, Moscow Industrial Bank, Svyaz-bank and Russia along with SMP Bank, 'the heroes of the occasion', will issue the cards.
What to do with the card outside the homeland?
However, the ability of Mir plastic cards to be useful outside Crimea, in the rest of Russia and abroad, is not clear. According to Vladimir Komlev, the director general of NSPC, 1,500 cash machines and about 100,000 point-of-sale terminals of the country will accept the card. According to the data of the Central Bank of Russia, in Russia, there are 213,000 ATMs and less than 1,5m POS terminals. It is planned to cover 90% of the total amount of the machines by the end of the third quarter of the next year.
'A plastic card is valuable when it can be used everywhere. We express our gratitude to the banks which started to prepare the infrastructural network for accepting cards,' said Skorobogatova.
Nevertheless, the Russian Mir still haven't formed. Going abroad, a card holder is outside the payment system. Consequently, it won't be possible to use this card abroad. And here MasterCard system, which they defended from, will help:
'Mir-Maestro card gives the card holders an opportunity to use that card not only in the infrastructure of Mir payment system but also abroad within the scope of the networks of the international payment systems from the very beginning of the existence of the Mir payment system,' Vladimir Komlev assured the audience.
Next-yearmass emission
This measure, by the way, will allow the owners of Mir to use it in Russia. Where MasterCard is accepted, co-badged cards can be used as well. But it is not cheap: a Mir card costs 1,5 times more expensive than its western analogues because of the special chip.
'There were a lot of concerns about the price of the card. I must say that this matter was discussed, and we have a task to make the card not only cheaper but also with advantages over international payment systems. In general, for banks the terms of a card are more advantageous and interesting from the economic point of view,' Skorobogatova assured.
What is more, apart from the seven pilot banks, 28 banks, at least, were interested in its favourable terms. The Central Bank is convinced it will enable to arrange their mass emission. And the administrative resource will help it: it is planned to create a demand for Mir by means of state workers' salary cards.
'The issue of these payment cards is a significant stage of the formation of the financial and economic system of Russia. We suppose the efforts of the NSPC will be highly appreciated by the end consumers and the banking sphere,' Olga Skorobogatova, the deputy chairman of the Central Bank, concluded.