Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has announced the termination of support for transactions with Visa and Mastercard cards issued in Russia. This is stated in a statement issued by the company on Tuesday.
The restriction will take effect from Wednesday, March 9.
“All transactions initiated with Mastercard and Visa cards issued in Russia will not be available on Binance,” the post reads. In addition, support for transactions in Russia with Mastercard and Visa cards from other countries will cease.
Against the backdrop of the ongoing military operation of Russia on the territory of Ukraine, some cryptocurrency platforms have begun to impose restrictions on Russians. Thus, the Qmall crypto exchange blocked the accounts of Russians and froze their assets on its trading platform, BTC-Alpha and CEX IO stopped working with Russian users, and the KUNA platform turned off trading in ruble pairs and closed the input and output of the Russian currency.
Binance and EXMO have stated that they do not plan to carry out mass blocking of users from Russia, but will close access to their trading platforms only to persons included in the sanctions lists. Coinbase and Kraken said they also have no plans to block users from Russia, but may be forced to do so at the request of the US authorities and other countries.
At the end of February, the Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mikhail Fedorov appealed to crypto exchanges to block all Russian users. He stated that it was important to freeze not only the accounts of Russia’s political leadership, but also ordinary clients.