Bank of Russia: Number of Visa and Mastercard cards fell by a quarter

The Bank of Russia, the country's central bank, reported that the total number of Visa and Mastercard payment cards in Russia fell by a quarter in the second quarter of the year. The figure was published as part of the regulator's data on the national payment card market.

The decline follows the decision by both American payment systems to suspend operations in Russia in March 2022, after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Western sanctions that followed. Cards issued by Russian banks continued to work inside the country, but stopped working abroad, and the systems no longer allowed new cards to be issued with their networks. As older cards expired, banks replaced them mostly with cards of the domestic Mir system or other alternatives.

The data mattered because it showed how far the two foreign brands had faded from everyday use in Russia, a point that returned to the debate about whether Visa and Mastercard could ever come back to the Russian market.