Visa and MasterCard have reportedly decided to resume payment card services in Crimea in April 2015 after the transfer of transactions to the local processing centre, National Payment Card System.
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The US financial services giants had halted their card services in the region in December 2014 following the US sanctions on Russia.
The move will enable Visa and MasterCard cardholders to take money from their accounts and conduct transactions inside of Russia.
According to a report by Russia Beyond The Headlines, Crimean residents will initially be allowed to pay or withdraw money from Visa and MasterCard cards only in the offices of the banks that issued the cards.
Cards, issued by Sberbank and other large Russian banks that have no offices in Crimea, will not be supported in the region and cardholders will have to leave the peninsula to transact with their cards.
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By GlobalDataState Duma financial committee deputy head Anatoly Aksakov said in a press conference in Simferopol: "A unified Russian transaction processing centre will begin functioning in April. All transactions will be processed by our centre.
"America won’t even see it and will not be able to block anything. Russian bank cards, Ukrainian, German, American, Japanese, any (cards), there will be no problem with that."
