Visa stops servicing Russian Banks from October 1

Visa international payment system stops servicing Russian Banks from October 1, Joinfo.ua reports.

Russian banks will transfer all transactions from Visa to national payment card system (NBTS). It is not clear yet, whether or not the banks make it on time, because they still have some processes to complete.

According to experts, such a transition and change of the settings in any way should not affect the process of card transactions. Experts also believe that the reputation of the company means a lot to Visa, so it won’t suspend the customers support.

Visa has e-mailed preliminary to the cardholders about the change in servicing procedure.

“After October 1 Visa can not guarantee the correct processing of authorization requests, arriving from Russia,” – the e-mail informs. – “Thus, Visa will not take the responsibility for rejected transactions, that would require the security deposit at the Central Bank”. Visa confirms sending such letters to all banks.

According to the legislation, the transfer of all the cards transactions to NBTS had to be completed until March 31. MasterCard made it almost on time. Visa started the process later.

However, at the moment, not all the banks completed the transfer. Therefore, part of transactions are processed by Visa, as  top 20 banks report.  “Almost all the banks send requests directly to the NBTS, but due to system failures some requests go to Visa. For this reason, banks received a directive to eliminate such errors,” – experts say.

Market participants estimate that a full transition to processing by NBTS will take another month.