The Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan denies the authorities’ involvement in the termination of Mir’s service

Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Akylbek Japarov said that the government of the country is not involved in the termination of the operation of Russian Mir cards in the country. This is the decision of the association of private banks. According to him, the work of the Mir cards brought more benefits to Kyrgyzstan itself than to Russia. Local authorities are now exploring options for the possible use of Mir cards.

“We weren’t the ones who suspended the Mir card. We found out about this after the service was discontinued. Since the IPC (interbank processing center) does not belong to the government, but is managed by commercial banks. Even the National Bank does not have control over the MPC, which is owned more than 54% by commercial banks. I assume that these commercial banks may have been afraid of possible sanctions,” the prime minister told the state agency “Cabar”.

According to the minister, Kyrgyzstan is not afraid of sanctions and sees no reason to impose them against the republic. “The Mir map would benefit us more than the Russians. Suspension of servicing this card will not affect Russia in any way. What we needed most was for this system to work for us. Since we stopped working, we started looking for other ways,” the prime minister said. He noted that the MOC should have agreed on this issue with the Cabinet of Ministers, because there are more than a million Kyrgyz citizens in Russia who use this card.

The Prime Minister said that Kyrgyzstan has been asking Russia for three years to open its own bank or a branch of one of the large Russian banks in the republic. “They promise, but they still haven’t opened it. I don’t know if they work so slowly or if they just don’t want to open a bank. It would be good if they opened at least one bank branch,” he added.

Since the end of 2023, foreign banks began to refuse to work with Russian ones due to the risks of sanctions from the United States. Large Chinese banks, as well as credit organizations from Turkey and the UAE, have stopped accepting payments from Russia. In February, the United States also imposed sanctions against the operator of the Mir payment system, after which banks in Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and some banks in Kazakhstan stopped working with it.

Banks in Kyrgyzstan stopped servicing Mir cards on April 3 due to the threat of secondary sanctions. Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan reported at a parliamentary meeting that work with the Mir map was stopped due to warnings from a Latvian software developer.

About problems with the Russian payment system in friendly countries – in the material of Kommersant “Closed World”.

Anastasia Larina