MasterCard is going to establish a local processing centre in Russia in order to reserve the market. The Vedomosti newspaper reports that consequently foreigners will not know information about plastic card operations made in Russia because this data will be processed domestically.
Amendments to the bill on national payment system which were proposed in the State Duma include restrictions on transfer of information about cards transactions made by Russian citizens. It changes the working principle of two most widely used payment systems - MasterCard and Visa. Now using a card the signal from ATM will be sent to the processing centre and then to the bank issued the card.
Earlier MasterCard had only two processing centres – the main (in the USA) and reserve (abroad Russia). Visa has four centres and all of them are also abroad.
Building of the own processing centre in Russia can cost MasterCard about $20 million, that is almost half of the annual income received by the system in Russia. To reserve this market Master Card is ready to spend this amount.
Earlier the representatives of MasterCard announced that they are ready to meet the law requirements irrespective of costs. Visa hopes that the law will have another state.
The bill “About national payment system” was elaborated by the Ministry of Finance and Bank of Russia in September 2009. The national payment system should become a competitor to Visa and MasterCard international payment systems in Russia. 85 per cent of the Russian market belongs to these two systems.
