The Federal Reserve is gearing up to introduce a proposal to reduce the fees merchants must pay to banks when customers make purchases using debit cards. The fees have remained unchanged for a decade.
After Visa and Mastercard suspended operations, Russian banks said that now they planned to issue cards using China's UnionPay system. Russian lenders like Sberbank and Alfa-Bank said that they are working on a rollout of UnionPay cards.
Sberbank, in a statement said, "Sberbank is working on the possibility of issuing co-branded Mir-UnionPay cards. We will inform you later about the timeframe for the issue."
Meanwhile, Alfa Bank said that it is "already working on launching cards on UnionPay, China's national payment system".