SELIGER, August 25 (RIA Novosti) - The tariffs of the National Card Payment System (NCPS), designed by the Russian Central Bank, will be competitive with other international payment systems, without any tariff service monopolies, Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina said Monday.
The task of the NCPS’ initial stage is the provision of technical and technological independence for Russian payments. “The second stage considered by the Central Bank is the issue of its own payment cards. These payment cards are to become attractive for people, for users, because there are various payment cards in the world. That’s why the card will be developing along with the other ones,” Nabiullina said at the Seliger international youth forum, taking place in Russia’s Tver Region.
The holders of the cards, issued by international payment systems, could continue to use them. “Nobody is going to forcefully ban anything, make somebody give up using the cards they are using. It’s important that the transactions on the payments would be processed on the Russian territory,” Nabiullina explained.
“Undoubtedly, we will not introduce tariff policies in order to make the services accessible, competitive. There should be no monopolistic services, monopolistic tariffs,” she stressed.
Early July, the Central Bank’s National Card Payment System department director Timur Batyrev said the card is to be issued in the third quarter of 2015.
The issue of making card payments inside Russia more secure was raised after Visa and MasterCard stopped processing payments by cardholders of Russia’s Rossiya and SMP banks, once they became subject to US sanctions. A joint stock company controlled by the Central Bank will administer the National Card Payment System.
