Russia definitively turns the page on Visa and Mastercard

Since their withdrawal from the Russian market in 2022, Visa and Mastercard have been gradually losing ground. But this time, Moscow is crossing a new threshold. The Bank of Russia now believes that the two American giants no longer have a place in the national financial ecosystem, as their market share has fallen below 17%.

Visa and Mastercard, giants turned ghosts in Russia

On Monday, Alla Bakina, director of the national payment systems department of the Bank of Russia, clearly stated Moscow’s position: Visa and Mastercard must definitively leave the Russian market.

According to her, these companies no longer provide the services they guaranteed previously, while the Russian national system continues to bear the technical costs linked to their presence.

This statement marks a new step in the Russian financial strategy since the Western sanctions imposed after the conflict began in Ukraine in 2022. At the time, Visa and Mastercard had suspended their operations in the country. However, millions of cards still functioned locally thanks to the Russian infrastructure.

But today, their influence has become marginal. According to the Bank of Russia, their share in national payments has fallen below 17%. Meanwhile, Russian banks are gradually replacing these cards with Mir, the national system launched in 2014 after the first geopolitical tensions with the West.

Mir takes over, a smooth transition

The Mir system, launched in 2014, is today the pillar of Russian payments. In January 2026, it had issued more than 476.5 million cards. Russian banks are progressively replacing expired Visa and Mastercard cards without waiting for formal instructions; the movement is already well underway.

Ilya Grashchenkov, director of the Center for Regional Policy Development, reassures: the transition will be “progressive and smooth, with no loss of funds, no payment interruption.” No rush to banks, no chaos. The system holds.

This withdrawal of Visa and Mastercard is not, moreover, an isolated phenomenon. In Brussels, the European Central Bank is also accelerating its work on the digital euro, relying on open standards to reduce the continent’s dependence on American infrastructures.

China, on its side, is strengthening its sovereign payment system and gradually cutting its financial ties with Washington. The world of payments is fragmenting at full speed.

Russia is not chasing Visa and Mastercard: it simply notes that they have already left. What is at stake here goes far beyond Moscow; it is proof that monetary sovereignty has become a strategic priority again, on both sides of the Atlantic as well as in Beijing. The hegemony of Western payment networks, long considered immutable, is showing its first real cracks.