The Chinese payment system UnionPay last year showed a multiple growth both in the number of cards issued by Russian banks and in terms of transaction volumes, Kommersant reports.

At the same time, the absolute majority of payment transactions, as well as cash withdrawals by cards of this payment system, took place abroad (90%). And if in the first half of the year they were mainly used for transfers to electronic wallets and withdrawals from ATMs, in the second half of the year more payments were made.

According to the Russian Post Bank, by the end of 2022, it had already issued over 254 thousand UnionPay cards. In another major Russian bank, the total issue of cards last year exceeded 200,000. “In the second half of the year, the demand for cards increased by almost 40% compared to the first half of the year,” they noted.

Another major Russian bank said that from March to the end of the year, the issue of cards of this payment system increased 20 times. Banks also note a significant increase in turnover on UnionPay cards last year.

According to Roman Prokhorov, chairman of the board of the Financial Innovations Association, UnionPay is the only international payment system that continued to operate in Russia. “Last year, there was a high demand from Russian citizens for cards of this system to enable cross-border transactions,” he said.

He also noted that the disadvantages of UnionPay cards (unpredictability of acceptance in different countries, not working with all foreign online stores) for many Russians overlapped the absence of the need to open and maintain an account in a foreign bank of a friendly jurisdiction for getting a “fully functional” card of the international payment system.



According to experts, over time, the intra-Russian traffic on cards of this payment system may also reach significant volumes. In the meantime, bankers say, it is mainly accounted for by co-badged cards, which in Russia work as Mir cards.

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