Visa will disclaim any obligation to guarantee service operations of cards from Russian banks from October 1st.
"Visa said that from October 1st it does not guarantee the processing of authorization requests for local operations (in Russia)," Kommersant cited one of the participants in the market. Visa confirmed that this letter was sent to all banks.
Thus, from the beginning of October the national system of payment cards (NBTS) must fully take over all Visa operations. It is not clear whether the NBTS can cope with this task. However, experts believe that even in the worst case, Visa will not stop service operations, as it would hit its reputation.
Recall that initially all the payment systems must be transferred to the NBTS before March 31st. Visa missed this deadline, so it was announced that it will be able to complete all the necessary measures before May 31st. However, until now the system was able to do it only partially. A scheme was implemented, in which the acquiring banks must send authorization requests to the NBTS and NBTS transmit requests to Visa. It was planned to switch to a national system of payment cards in the third quarter, but this time they also missed the deadline. According to experts, Visa needs another month to finalize the transition.
An associate professor of stock markets and financial engineering of RANEPA, Vasiliy Yakimkin, in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza noted that the possible failure of the system will hit Russian clients, "because more than 50% own a Visa card." If the United States and Europe will strengthen sanctions, Visa will support these sanctions and then, accordingly, there will be a problem with the cards again. I think that the Russians have become accustomed to using ATMs and credit cards. Therefore, it will be a serious shake-up," he explained.
"But on the other hand, it is not fatal, because a domestic card is on the way. This will stimulate the Russian banks to use domestic cards, that's all. Visa will simply lose its customers if it imposes restrictions on payments," the expert added.
According to him, "if Visa delay the payments, it just will take more time. Then people will find other ways to operate with banks. Many people make transactions via internet banking. There is nothing bad in this. There will be temporary inconvenience. In case of any problems, people just find other cards," Vasily Yakimkin concluded.
A leading researcher at the Institute of Applied Economic Research of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economics and Public Administration, Alexander Abramov, in his turn, is more optimistic. "As far as I understand, now the national system of payment cards will carry part of the Visa functions. And if it will operate reliably, it is unlikely to damage the interests of card holders," he said.
"It is unlikely that Visa was interested in the creation of some kind of internal crisis. So I think that everything will go according to schedule," the expert added.
"Switching to other means of communication is always difficult, but this decision hasn't been made in 2-3 days. This transition has already been under way for a long time. So I think everyone has enough time," Alexander Abramov said.
