Russia wants to make its new payments system compatible with China

Russia’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev (photo), says he wants to make the country’s new payments system compatible with China’s UnionPay as a way to reduce the risk from further financial sanctions by the West.

Medvedev, who is to meet his Chinese counterpart in Russia next week, told China Central Television that Moscow was looking for ways to make Russia’s new system compatible with Chinese payments systems.

Russia has introduced a new national payment system to cut reliance on Western systems, such as Visa and MasterCard. Those operators stopped providing services to clients of one Russian bank after Washington imposed sanctions over Moscow’s role in the Ukraine crisis.

The Russian payment system is called Mir, which translates as „World” or „Peace”, while China has a system called UnionPay.

„We are currently considering ways of harmonizing our national payments system; both the card that we are going to issue, the Mir card, on the one hand, and the UnionPay system, on the other hand. We believe that this would enhance the reliability of financial settlements,” Medvedev said according to an interview transcript released by his office.

Medvedev said his proposal would cut reliance on global payment systems, including SWIFT, the network which supports most electronic transactions.

„In this respect, this kind of cooperation is very useful because in this situation no one will be able to block the development of financial traffic,” Medvedev said.

„I believe that the use of the yuan in mutual settlements, the use of positions opened in yuan and rubles, mutual financial transaction technologies, and the use of co-branding cards – all of this is very useful for our countries,” Medvedev said, according to the transcript.

Source: Reuters