PayPal, MasterCard and Visa have joined the huge number of companies that left Russia after Putin's special military operation against Ukraine.
As such, the question remains whether Russians will turn to cryptocurrencies.
Visa, MasterCard and PayPal tighten the screws on Russia:
Since the start of the war between the two former Soviet Union states, the Western world has taken a different approach than in the past and started imposing sanctions rather than getting directly involved in the conflict.
In addition, countless companies and organizations have decided to withdraw from Russia, calling it the aggressor.
Many of the sanctions come from a financial point of view, and the last to join the companies that ban their services from the Russians are three giant financial companies based in the United States of America:
Visa, MasterCard and Paypal.
Before the news spread, Reuters had previously reported PayPal's intentions on March 5, noting that the company had already shut down its services early Saturday in Russia.
Dan Shulman, President and CEO of PayPal, explained:
PayPal stands with the international community in condemning Russia's violent military aggression in Ukraine.
The company will support withdrawals for a certain period, allowing customers residing in Russia to withdraw their account balances.
And Visa followed suit, beginning the process of halting all transactions.
In a statement, Visa said:
Once the procedures are completed, all transactions made with Visa cards issued in Russia will no longer work outside the country, and any Visa cards issued by financial institutions outside Russia will no longer work.
She also told Mastercard:
We have decided to suspend our network services in Russia after a thorough review of the current situation.
The company explained that this decision was due to recent regulatory requirements from global regulators.
While most national banks are excluded from SWIFT and the aforementioned companies cease their normal business operations in Russia, Russians have very few options.
In addition, several cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, Kraken and Coinbase, have refused to stop serving users residing in Russia, at least for the time being.
Meanwhile, many regulators have warned that oligarchs could use digital currencies to bypass sanctions.
