Kyrgyzstan's Elkart Interbank Processing Center said on April 2 that the Central Asian country's banks will stop processing transactions with Russian Mir payment cards as of April 5 due to Western sanctions imposed on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. Last week, another former Soviet republic, Armenia, announced a similar move. In September 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department threatened foreign banks with secondary sanctions for servicing Mir cards, a Russian card-payment system. Earlier, some banks in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam, as well as Samsung Pay and Apple Pay systems, stopped working with Mir cards.
Kyrgyzstan To Stop Processing Russian Payment Cards Over U.S. Sanctions
In September 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department threatened foreign banks with secondary sanctions for servicing Mir cards.