According to the head of Mastercard in Russia Alexey Malinovsky, the company has been doing business in Russia for over 20 years.
According to him, at present, Russians use more than 100 million Mastercard cards issued by Russian banks.
“The company is a socially significant payment system, and all transactions with Russian cards are reliably processed by the NSPK,” he said.
In turn, Visa said that the company has been working in Russia for over 30 years and is contributing to the digitalization of the country's economy.
The company also announced that it is bringing modern payment technologies and solutions to the Russian market.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia is actively working to abandon payment systems controlled by Western countries.
According to him, Russia sees great prospects in working with foreign partners to gradually move away from the use of the dollar in mutual settlements.
The Kremlin did not rule out that Russia may restrict the use of Visa and Mastercard payment systems.