Transfers from Mir cards to the cards of national partner payment systems in three CIS countries will be launched this fall, CEO of Russian National Payment Card System (NSPK, Mir payment system operator) Vladimir Komlev said, although he did not specify the countries.

Izvestiya reports that the Russian operator has five such partners currently: ArCa (Armenia), Elcard (Kyrgyzstan), Uzcard (Uzbekistan), Belkart (Belarus) and Korti Milli (Tajikistan).

“In 2020, we plan to launch p2p transactions with all our CIS partners, and later on we intend to add to the project other countries that have integrated Mir payment system. We are looking for a solution with regulators, and integration with partners is proceeding at varying pace,” said Komlev.

According to him, the difficulties are created by differences in the regulations of cross-border transactions.

An Izvestiya source has said that the project will include the Belarusian, Armenian and Kyrgyz systems in the nearest future.

At the request of Banks.am, ArCa has commented on the reports, noting that “there are certain organizational and legal issues concerning the legislative requirements and standards, which the sides are trying to solve through consultations and certain efforts”.

Vladimir Komlev estimates that the volume of transactions made with the new mechanism will reach several billions of rubles. The possibility of card-to-card money transfers will be in demand among people who come to Russia for temporary work, Komlev believes.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the transfers with five NSPK partner states via various payment systems made USD 3bn (around RUB 192.6bn) in the first half of 2019.

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