Russian parliament approves law on national card payment system

© AFP 2014/ Natalia Kolesnikova

15:28 29/04/2014

MOSCOW, April 29 (RAPSI) – The Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, approved the law on creating a national card payment system on Tuesday.

The system would be structured as an open joint-stock company fully owned by the Central Bank, which would maintain complete control of the clearing center for two years after its launch. After that, the Central Bank would be able to sell part of its stake, but the buyer could not buy more than 10%. The strategy of the national card payment system would be developed by a nine-person board of directors.

The idea of creating a national card payment system crystallized after Visa and MasterCard stopped servicing the transactions of Bank Rossiya and SMP Bank clients after the United States imposed sanctions on Rossiya bank, its main shareholder and SMP Bank.

President Vladimir Putin said that Visa and MasterCard could lose the Russian market and pointed to the need to create a national card payment system in Russia.

The Russian authorities are also to promote the operation of the national card payment system outside Russia. According to Timur Batyrev, the head of the Central Bank’s national payment system department, this can only be ensured through close cooperation with international payment systems.

According to the Central Bank’s calculations, it would take six months to create the infrastructure of the national card payment system, and the printing of at least 100 million cards would take up to two years.