US credit card groups join growing exodus of foreign companies as Moscow steps up its war on Ukraine
As Visa and Mastercard move swiftly to limit their business in Russia, their developing rivals face a challenge to fill the gap.
“Russian domestic transactions continue to be processed over Russian national infrastructure,” Visa chief product officer Jack Forestell told investors last week. “We will not generate revenue from any of those transactions that are processed in Russia, even if it is a transaction from a card carrying a Visa mark.”
“The early signs suggest that the current crisis is at least as serious for Russia as the great financial crisis of 2008-9 or the debt default of 1998,” Bloomberg Economics economist Scott Johnson wrote on Friday. “The economic fallout will be commensurately large, with the price for Vladimir Putin’s war almost certain to be a deep recession.”