UPDATE: American Express announced Sunday that it too is suspending all operations in Russia, meaning its cards won't work at stores or ATMs in Russia, nor will locally issued AmEx cards work outside of Russia. The company is also "suspending all business operations in Belarus," over its cooperation with Russia on the invasion of Ukraine.
"While American Express does not employ anyone directly in Ukraine, we do have hundreds of colleagues in the surrounding countries, and dozens of colleagues in Russia," Chairman and CEO Stephen J. Squeri said in a statement. "As the situation continues to escalate, we will keep doing everything in our power to support all of our colleagues throughout the region and take every precaution to ensure their safety."
Original Story 3/5:Processing payments in Russia is about to get a lot harder as Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal will suspend operations in the country in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"We have decided to suspend our network services in Russia," Mastercard said in a statement. "This decision flows from our recent action to block multiple financial institutions from the Mastercard payment network, as required by regulators globally.
"Cards issued by Russian banks will no longer be supported by the Mastercard network. And, any Mastercard issued outside of the country will not work at Russian merchants or ATMs," Mastercard added.
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Visa said it will "cease all Visa transactions over the coming days" in Russia. "Once complete, all transactions initiated with Visa cards issued in Russia will no longer work outside the country and any Visa cards issued by financial institutions outside of Russia will no longer work within the Russian Federation."
“We are compelled to act following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and the unacceptable events that we have witnessed,” Al Kelly, chairman and CEO of Visa Inc., said in a statement. “We regret the impact this will have on our valued colleagues, and on the clients, partners, merchants and cardholders we serve in Russia. This war and the ongoing threat to peace and stability demand we respond in line with our values.”
On Twitter, Mykhailo Fedorov, Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, shared a letter from Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal, in which he said PayPal will also suspend service in Russia, while "enabling our customers and our global employee community to support efforts to provide humanitarian relief in Ukraine."
The move comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to US senators on a Zoom call this morning, during which he urged a crackdown on commercial transactions, CNN reports.