Source: Adobe Artwork/Araki
Customers of five sanctioned Russian banks will not be able to use their cards to pay with Apple Pay and Google Pay, the Russian Central Bank said.
The banks in question include VTB Group Banks, Sovcombank, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank and Otkritie, according to the announcement. All banks have been sanctioned by Western governments following Russia's attack on Ukraine.
The announcement added that cardholders from these banks will not be able to use their cards outside of Russia and when shopping on e-commerce platforms "registered in sanctions-bearing countries."
The central bank stressed that cards and other payments from the sanctioned banks, as well as all other banks, will continue to operate normally in Russia.
In Moscow, some residents were already lining up at ATMs yesterday to withdraw cash, amid growing fears over the imposition of withdrawal limits in Russia, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The news could give a further boost to the crypto adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) in Russia and elsewhere, as its properties become known to residents as censorship-resistant money.
Google and Apple have yet to comment on how the sanctions will affect their payment services. However, in a speech on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said of the sanctioned banks that "all their assets in the United States will be frozen" and that the West "will limit Russia's ability to do business in dollars, euros , pounds and yen to be part of the global economy".
In addition to the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia have said they will apply sanctions against Russia, including freezing assets held by Russian financial institutions.
The EU is also in talks to freeze the assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in response to the Ukraine invasion, Euronews reported. However, the freezing of these assets is more symbolic than truly punitive.