Chinese payment system UnionPay fears secondary sanctions and leaves the Russian market

It is no longer possible to pay in Russia with cards of the Chinese payment system UnionPay. The payment system will also not work in retail outlets that use terminals of Russian banks under EU and US sanctions. It is rumored that UnionPay’s decision is due to fears of secondary sanctions related to Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine. UnionPay has not yet commented on this information.

In March, after the start of Russia’s full-scale military aggression in Ukraine, the largest international payment systems Visa and Mastercard left the terrorist country. Their foreign cards do not work in Russia, and Russian cards do not work abroad. UnionPay was the only international payment system that continued to work for the occupying country. Against this backdrop, Russians have increased their demand for cards from the Chinese payment system. However, many foreign online stores do not accept payments with UnionPay cards issued in Russia.

Officially, the Chinese company has not announced any restrictions on working with sanctioned banks, but in the spring it became known that it had banned Russian banks from issuing its cards. As a reminder, the largest Russian banks — Sberbank, VTB, Alfa-Bank, and Promsvyazbank — are subject to US and EU sanctions.

It is worth noting that American and European diplomats are strongly committed to imposing sanctions on Russia and support other countries in this regard. For example, the US recently called on the Japanese authorities to increase pressure on cryptocurrency exchanges and miners in Japan to break any ties with Russia in order to financially isolate the terrorist state from the outside world. In turn, the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has expanded the list of Russians subject to account blocking on the cryptocurrency platform.