Russia’s major market player, Visa has not come forward with an announcement so far. The agreement with Visa is in pre-signing, says a CB official. “We have not signed yet, however, we continue to talk to the CB and NPCS to reach a solution that would benefit everyone ASAP”, commented a Visa rep. NPCS has stated that other international payment systems plan to sign by 1 April 2015.

While MasterCard already had an agreement with the CB in mid-December, Visa still does not have it, says a source close to Visa. In September, Visa signed a memo with Universal Electronic Cards, to pass on the traffic, however, this failed due to new amendments to the National Payment System Act that limited the choice of players to one company – all domestic Universal Electronic Cards transactions are to be processed by NPCS alone, otherwise the international payment system is required to place an insurance deposit. By the end of December Visa continued talks with Universal Electronic Cards controlling shareholder, Sberbank, reveals a source.

The Visa – NPCS transfer is a done deal, asserts a Top 10 banker, arguing that banks are installing both MasterCard and Visa processing equipment now. He added that these two international payment systems will be the first to be linked up, the rest will have to make the insurance deposit, since they will not have enough time to become compliant by end of Q1 2015.

As stipulated in the terms and conditions of the NPCS contract, the processing for MasterCard in Russia goes to the CB instead of Sberbank. The company is happy with the switch of the processing bank, said the MasterCard rep. He opined that it is more convenient for participant banks to use standard reserve accounts at the Central Bank of their jurisdiction rather than open special payment system transaction accounts at local commercial banks. “We do not expect any change in related expenses, and the cardholders will not feel any of this”, he added.

Sberbank made a huge turnover on correspondent MasterCard accounts, but those were overnights, says a top manager at a private bank. “I doubt that Sberbank will lose a lot with MasterCard taking away its processing — both liabilities and fee income wise”, he claims. Any other bank’s business would have suffered with the loss of MasterCard processing, but Sberbank is too huge to feel the impact, he says. Sberbank declined to comment.

Project Group №1