Sanctions on Russia are impacting payment systems, although their effectiveness is unproven in trade

RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS - In Brief 31 Mar 2024 by Alex Teddy
On March 28 the South Korean company Samsung said that as of April 1 that the Russian Mir payment system will be disabled on Samsung. Google Pay and Apple Pay have already severed ties with the Mir Russian payment system. The timing of Samsung's decision is possibly related to Russia's recent vote to close the UN panel monitoring sanctions on North Korea. However, Samsung will not disable Mir in Belarus. Most countries that have sanctioned Russia have done the same to Belarus on the basis that Belarus expedited the invasion of Ukraine.  In February 2024 the US introduced sanctions on the National Payment Card System which operates Mir. It is is thought that a majority of Russians use Mir because MasterCard and Visa stopped allowing their cards to be used by Russian banks.  On March 19 it was announced that Armenian banks would stop allowing the use of Mir payment cards from March 30. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have already done so. Armenia made the decision possibly in response to threat of US secondary sanctions. But it also comes at a time of strained relations between Moscow and Yerevan.  On March 25 a crypto currency trading platform called CommEX suspended its services. It will end completely on May 10. CommEX took over operations in Russia that were managed by Binance until September 2023. The United States was investigating Binance on suspicion of breaching sanctions on Russia when Binance sold out to CommEX. The ownership and HQ of CommEX are unclear.   Many Russians have started to use cryptocurrency exchanges as a means of circumventing sanctions. There are ways in which Russia is finding it easy to get around sanctions. A dark fleet of tankers exp...

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