As of right now, Visa and MasterCard type card companies transfer data oversees in order to process and approve transactions made in Russia…
This data transfer is not going over well with the Russian side. So Russia is in the works to do her own transaction approval and processing. It will cost millions of dollars to set up the system, but will stop a huge data flow leak to the West and keep billions of dollars in fees, (120 billion rubles ($4 billion) annually) in Russia…
This has not gone over well with the Western world and in fact as we read this, special interest groups in the West have made it clear that they consider the fact that Russia would want to keep her data safe is a threat to Russia’s reputation and will hurt business with the Western world (because as you know we don’t trust Russia now, much less if Russia hides all their credit card data. Hummm…) and all those fees would stay in Russia. In fact it seems that lobbyist have been poring into Russia over the last few months and wheeling and dealing is going on to try to stop Russia from severing the ties… 🙂
I have to smile at the audacity of the West…
How would you like it if your credit card transaction (with all your data, fees and information) had to be sent to Russia or China for approval before you could do a transaction…
It just makes sense in the long run for Russia to be self sufficient…