MOSCOW (Sputnik) — US-based international payment system Visa has no plans to abandon the Russian market and the Russian customers will be able to use its cards as usual, the company's press service in Russia said Wednesday.
"We remain in Russia and confirm that Visa cards continue to work as usual," the press service said in a statement written in Russian.
March 31 was the deadline for Visa and MasterCard to switch the processing of their operations in Russia to the National Card Payment System introduced in an effort to reduce Russia's dependency on foreign payment systems.
However, Visa said last week it still needs up to two months to transfer processing of transactions made on its credit cards in Russia to the local payment system.
The RBC television channel, citing its own sources, said the Visa system would now be forced to pay a guarantee fee of around $60 million for the first quarter of 2015, being unable to connect to the Russian national system of payment cards and transfer its traffic.
In May 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law legislation establishing a national system of payment cards to safeguard financial operations in the country.
