Two large Turkish banks refused to accept Mir cards due to US pressure
Two large Turkish banks suddenly refused to work with Russian Mir cards, despite previous agreements. We are talking about İş Bank and Denizbank.
It is reported by Tass.
A TASS correspondent in Turkey tried to withdraw cash using a Mir card at Denizbank. ATMs report an error confirming the transaction and return the card.
“The customer support service of Bank Deniz emphasized that transactions using the Mir card and those related to Russian currency are no longer carried out,” writes the Prime economic information agency.
The largest Turkish private bank Is bankasi also suspended work with the Mir payment system.
As reported by Halk TV, the reason was statements about possible sanctions by the US and UK Treasury against foreign financial institutions that accept Mir cards.
The Mir system has already commented on the decision of Turkish banks to accept cards. Servicing Mir cards in Turkish banks will depend on the position of the local banks themselves, the press service of the payment system said
“Foreign partners themselves make the decision to open the infrastructure for accepting Mir cards; their acceptance and service in a particular country will depend on the position of the credit institutions themselves,” the system said.
They recalled that some Turkish acquiring banks that accept Mir cards can use their devices to reject transactions on cards from sanctioned Russian banks.
Now currency transactions using Mir cards with Russian money are not carried out, ATMs do not accept these plastic means of payment. Despite this, the Bank of Russia intends to further expand the geography of accepting Mir cards.
Russian tour operators already recommend that domestic tourists take cash currency when traveling to Turkey.
“I’ll say a simple thing: if Turkish banks stop accepting cards from the Mir payment system, then this is not a problem for Russia and Russians, but a problem for Turkey and Turkish business. If they don’t solve it, they won’t have Russian real estate investors and tourists. It's that simple. And we don’t need to turn ourselves inside out in search of a solution - the Turkish side should turn ourselves inside out,” writes Russian expert on Turkey Ivan Starodubtsev in his Telegram channel.
However, this assessment looks rather misleading, since the problems of Turkish business do not in any way cancel out the emergence of a lot of problems among the Russians.
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