The world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, announced on Tuesday that it will no longer accept Mastercard and Visa cards in Russia starting tomorrow.
The decision, announced on Binance’s blog, came after the world’s largest card operators announced that they would stop services in the country within the framework of sanctions against Moscow. American Express also suspended operations in Russia last week.
Russia has faced the most stringent US sanctions ever seen, blocking several major banks from the SWIFT payment network and freezing their foreign assets. Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, stopped its European operations after this move.
Binance announced the decision on its official Twitter account as follows;
“All Mastercard and Visa Cards issued in Russia will be unavailable from Binance 2022-03-09, 21:00 UTC.”
Commenting on the decision, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said that the decision is not in their hands. .
“This is out of our hands. It is not our decision.”
Russian Moves from Cryptocurrency Exchanges
Binance, like most major crypto exchanges, had refused to ban its Russian clients outright. But the exchanges have agreed to abide by US sanctions that all blacklisted assets will be blocked from their platforms. Coinbase recently announced that it has blocked 25,000 Russian wallets that it says engage in illegal activities.
Kraken CEO Jesse Powell also spoke out against banning Russian users, saying he would not do so unless legally required.
The US government recently added cryptocurrencies to its sanctions against Russia and warned exchanges from dealing with blacklisted individuals.
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