Russia is considering imposing sanctions on its “friendly” countries

“Sanctions against our financial sector are not ending, on the contrary – they are intensifying. Despite this, we continue the dialogue with our friendly countries, which would allow us to develop infrastructure and look for alternative solutions,” Nabiullina is quoted as saying by Reuters.

According to Nabiullina, Russia explains to its partner countries that maintaining the operation of “Mir” is in their interests – both Russian tourists and labor migrants who make money transfers to their homeland need Russian cards.

However, there are also “theoretically possible” retaliatory sanctions – bans and restrictions, said Nabiullina.

“I think they should be seen as measures of last resort against countries if they don’t behave constructively and help find solutions and alternatives,” she added.

Shortly after the annexation of Crimea, the Russian payment system “Mir” started operating, with more than 130 million payment cards in operation. It was sanctioned by the US in February, and was abandoned by most banks in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan very soon after.

At the end of March, the Mir Pay app was also deleted from the Google Play Store. “Samsung” announced that from April 3, users can no longer add “Mir” cards to the “Samsung Pay” tool, but the Chinese payment system “UnionPay” blocked the operation of the joint payment cards “Mir-UnionPay” outside the borders of Russia. Similarly, the banks of Tajikistan and Belarus can refuse from “Mir”, according to a source in the Russian banking sector.

Belarus has its own payment system “Belkart”. Similarly, Tajik Korti Milli has an agreement with the National Payment Card System (NSPK), which is wholly owned by the Central Bank of Russia. NSPK is responsible for servicing the “Mir” system. US sanctions have been imposed against NSPK, so the systems of Belarus and Tajikistan could choose to stop cooperation with NSPK in the foreseeable future. It is indicated that both Belarusian and Tajik banks still use international payment systems, which are actively lobbying the banks of the former USSR republics to abandon “Mir” cards.