Apple Pay Cuts Off Mir Cards in Russia

28 MARCH 2022 - Apple Pay seems to be as dead in Russia as Apple can make it. While we’d heard late last month that US and EU sanctions had forced both Google Pay and Apple Pay offline in the country, a loophole let some users there keep using Apple’s service. Users of Russia’s Mir card were able to keep making transactions, with the aforementioned sanctions only affecting Mastercard and Visa users. Now a piece from Apple Insider says the end of last week brought the end of Mir’s time with Apple’s contactless payment solution. The piece had both Sberbank and Russia's National Card Payment System letting users know late last week that they could no longer add new cards to Apple Pay, while support for previously added cards would stop “over the next few days.”