Payment services such as Apple Pay not available in Russia after US and EU sanctions

Payment services such as Apple Pay and Google Pay are no longer available to customers of certain sanctioned Russian banks. U.S. and European Union sanctions continued to freeze Russian bank operations and overseas assets held by specific individuals in the country as the Ukraine crisis continued into Friday.

As a consequence, Apple customers will no longer be able to use any cards issued by sanctioned Russian banks to interface with U.S. payment systems such as Google or Apple Pay.

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Cards issued by banks sanctioned by Western countries can also be used without restrictions throughout Russia, according to the Russian Central Bank. Client funds on the account linked to the card are also fully stored and available.

At the same time, customers of sanctioned banks (VTB Group, Sovcombank, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank, Otkritie’s banks) will not be able to use their cards to pay abroad, nor to use them to pay for services in online stores, as well as in sanctioned banks. Nationally registered service aggregator.

Also, cards from these banks will not work with Apple Pay, Google Pay services, but standard contact or contactless payments with these cards will work throughout Russia.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered a “black swan” event in the stock market, with Apple, other big tech stocks and financial assets such as bitcoin selling off.

If the U.S. government subsequently adds sanctions to ban the sale of any hardware or software to Russia, it would affect any tech company doing business in the country, for example, Apple would not be able to sell iPhones, provide OS updates, or continue to manage the app store.

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