FINANCE, Interviews

Mehdi Rahimian: Russia and Iran may issue a cobranded bank card

Mehdi Rahimian, a PhD student at State University of Management, took part in the recent Gaidar Forum in Moscow held at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, and spoke to Invest Foresight, Forum’s strategic media partner, about advancements in new bank card systems.

“Bilateral Russia-Iran payment system is in the process of development. Russia has made a major progress in developing bilateral payment systems with a number of countries,” he said. “Visa, Mastercard, American Express were the first international payment systems. Then Japan created JCB which is an international bank card used all over the world. The next country to create an international payment system, China UnionPay, was China. Then an international payment system was launched by Iran which was under sanctions for many years and hence no international payment systems could operate in the country, so in 2002 Iran created a national bank card system which was later joined by bank card systems of Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and became operational in Armenia and Turkey.”

“In 2015 Russia launched its MIR national bank card system. MIR card has partnered with JCB, UnionPay and Maestro and along with other countries Russia has introduced a cobranded bank card. If one has a cobranded card, one can use it in Russia and in many other countries. Many banks issue these cobranded cards now, Russian Agricultural Bank, for instance. I hope we will soon see a cobranded Russian-Iranian MIR card,” Mr Rahimian concluded.

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