Amid western sanctions imposed on Russia, Turkish services that previously accepted payments with Mir cards began to block such operations, Izvestia writes.

So far, it is no longer possible to buy tickets on the Turkish Airlines website with Mir cards issued by a number of sanctioned Russian banks, as well as those that were not subject to sanctions. The system asks the client to contact a credit institution or try another payment method.

On one of the travel forums numerous users complained that they couldn’t pay for tickets on the website of Turkish Airlines with the cards of the Russian payment system issued by Sberbank, VTB and Tinkoff.

According to Izvestia, in addition to Visa and Mastercard cards issued by Russian banks, Turkish Airlines also banned operations with Mir cards issued by Sberbank. However, Mir has not yet been removed from the list of possible payment methods for Turkish Airlines. Thus, to buy tickets, Russians have to go to one of the airline’s offices or use the cards of foreign banks or Union Pay.



Other Turkish platforms have also begun to block payments with Mir cards. For example, due to sanctions, the popular online store TT-Turk, which delivers to Russia, blocked payments with Mir cards issued by a number of sub-sanctioned banks.

According to Viktor Dostov, the head of the Electronic Money Association, the reason why Turkish acquiring banks may refuse to work with Russian credit institutions on the SDN list may be the fear of falling under secondary sanctions. He added that Turkish banks also need liquidity guarantees, reassurance that all transactions will be covered by cash inflows from Russian credit institutions, since funds are not credited instantly.

Today, Mir cards are accepted in 10 foreign countries where they can be used to pay for purchases. Currently, some foreign acquiring banks that provide acceptance of Mir cards in these countries can independently decide to stop servicing them in the network of their devices or on websites. This may affect the cards of Russian banks, which are under blocking sanctions, the press service of the payment system said. In that case the operations with Mis cards will be rejected by acquiring banks.

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