"The boost in bilateral economic ties would facilitate the increase of the share of the national currencies in bilateral transactions. We know that President [Erdogan] strongly supports this… The creation of the infrastructure for Russian Mir payment system in Turkey would be the first positive step toward this goal," Putin said, opening the meeting in expanded format.
In November 2016, Deputy Governor at Russia's Central Bank (CB) Olga Skorobogatova said that the CB was in talks with Turkey, Vietnam and several other popular destinations for Russian tourists on their adopting of the Mir payment system.
The Mir payment cards are expected to be able to access multiple transaction networks, which is known as co-badging. Mir has secured deals with MasterCard, JCB, AmEx and Union Pay and is expecting to sign an agreement with Visa in 2017.
The Mir national payment system kicked off in Russia on April 1, 2015. The system was created after Visa and MasterCard ceased to serve the cards of some Russian banks because of the US sanctions imposed on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine. The system seeks to ensure the sovereignty of the national payment industry and secure the processing of domestic transactions using Russian bank cards.
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