The story
In March 2014, after the U.S. imposed sanctions against Russia in connection with the annexation of Crimea, the international payment systems Visa and MasterCard for the second time in history stopped servicing cards of several Russian banks in retail outlets and ATMs of the international network. The preparation of amendments to the Federal Law "On the National Payment System" was initiated in order to infrastructurally and informationally enclose the process of money transfers within Russia.
On July 23, 2014, the joint-stock company National Payment Card System (NSPK JSC) was established with two tasks:
Creation of an operational and clearing center for processing domestic transactions on cards of international payment systems;
Issue and promotion of the national payment card.
Vladimir Komlev, who previously headed United Credit Card Company (UCS), was appointed CEO of the NSPK JSC.
Since April 2015, all domestic MasterCard transactions have been fully transferred to the NSPK processing. Cards of international payment systems became operational in Crimea.
In June 2015, all domestic Visa transactions were finally transferred to the NSPK processing.
The NSPK signed several agreements on joint issuance of co-branded cards with international payment systems:
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June 19, 2015 — with MasterCard for cards of Maestro;
July 7, 2015 — with Japanese JCB;
July 2015 — with American Express.
On December 15, 2015, the NSPK announced the issuance of the first Mir cards by seven Russian banks.
In 2017, the National Payment Card System became a member of the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC).
In 2022, due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express suspended their operations in Russia, as a result:
cards of these systems issued by Russian banks do not work abroad and on the websites of foreign online stores;
cards of these systems issued by foreign banks do not work in Russia.
However, Visa, Mastercard and American Express cards issued by Russian banks continue to work in Russia. This is possible due to the fact that transactions on them are processed by the National Payment Card System.
At the end of 2022, NSPK's net profit according to RAS increased 2.58 times, amounting to 25.3 billion rubles. The company's revenue by the end of the year amounted to 50.3 billion rubles, assets — 69.8 billion rubles. NSPK also paid dividends of 4.9 billion rubles in 2022 to its sole shareholder, the Bank of Russia, which is 805 million rubles more than a year earlier.
Vladimir Komlev was the CEO of NSPK from the company's foundation until the end of 2023. On January 1, 2024, he left the post. On May 29, 2024, it became known that Dmitry Dubynin would become the new head of NSPK, such a decision was made by the National Financial Board of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.
From Wikipedia’s article on Russian National Card Payment System, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4