CarderPlanet
Professional
Russia has the WORLD, China has UnionPay, and Mastercard and Visa are almost everywhere. And what other popular payment systems are there on Earth? I will tell you in this article. Surprises are waiting for you - for example, Indian cards with an unusual digital service, Islamic "non-credit cards", as well as the oldest payment system in the world.
I'll say right away-there are a lot of payment systems in the world. Almost every country has its own, or even a whole scattering. But are you interested in reading about some Italian CartaSi or Danish Dancourt, when slightly less than all residents of these countries apply for Visas, Mastercards, or at least AmEx or UnionPay (recently)?
These are Schrodinger payment systems - they seem to exist, but they don't seem to exist. Therefore, we will not consider them. And we will analyze it:
So, here we go:
You know, when I was writing this section, I thought, " Now I'm going to unearth some sacred difference between two chairs... rather, systems." But the problem is that... it's gone!
I see the competition between Mastercard and Visa as something like this.
Of course, they are not completely identical. They have some minor differences in pricing for banks, in chargebacks policies, or in the corporate structure and approaches to business organization. But these are all nuances that are interesting only to professionals from the payment industry.
However, competition in the markets and the struggle for the heart of the consumer has not been canceled. This means that the differences should be in individual features and benefits for the client, as well as in marketing.
Among the features and advantages, I will highlight the following:
The second is Discover. In the early 1980s, a major American supermarket chain, Sears, decided that customers weren't buying enough, and it would be a good idea to give them credit cards. As a result, we launched our own credit card - Discover Card. At first, the project was not very successful, but over the next couple of decades, Discover bought several payment players (for example, the Pulse interbank payment network in 2005, or the Diners Club payment system in 2008), and also entered into partnerships with many banks. And as a result, it turned into a full-fledged payment system, with its own bank, card issuance, blackjack, you know.
AmEx and Discover have one important difference from Visa and Mastercard.
The latter are engaged in making payments through their own payment engine, but they don't know how to issue payment cards themselves. And they don't interact with the end cardholders (i.e. us). You can't go to the Visa or Mastercard office and issue the card directly, but you will have to do it through some third party - a bank, fintech, a chain of stores, or, for example, an airline (depending on which card you are talking about). But AmEx and Discover can issue cards independently.
That is, they are payment systems and financial institutions (=banks) all rolled into one.
By the way, it is absorbed by DiscoverDiners Club can be called the oldest payment system in the world. It released its first map in 1950. And in general, this company is quite curious:
On the left is the same Frank McNamara. On the right - the first (or one of the first) Diners Club cards. As you can see, payment systems owe their appearance to two basic human qualities-a love of eating and a leaky memory.
Let's talk about this very UnionPay. The system was founded in 2002 by the decision of the State Council of the People's Republic of China and the People's Bank of China. No American mergers and acquisitions, just a firm and clear decision of the party!
UnionPay is now accepted in 170+ countries, including the United States and Western Europe. However, not everywhere - especially the probability of having problems when paying with a Chinese card in Western online stores is high.
A fun purely Chinese fact. There are two hieroglyphs on the UnionPay logo. The first one means "association", the second one means "money". They were translated into English and named the card UnionPay. Attention question: What app translator was used for the second character?
The card connects to Apple Pay and Google Pay only in China (apparently, the local regulator pushed Apple and Google). In the rest of the world, it only works with Huawei Pay on devices of the same name.
UnionPay is very active in using co-paging, which is a kind of growth hack for them.
Here are some Uzbek kobages, one of them is just with UnionPay. This is a convenient tool for countries that have developed their own payment systems (and Master Cards and Visas do not work very well), but which are poorly accepted abroad.
I want to mention one important nuance. In 2015, UnionPay was already becoming a global leader in the volume of payments made. But back then, 99.5% of these payments were made inside China. In addition, UnionPay was still the main payment method in China at that time, and the positions of any QR payments via WeChat or Alipay were relatively modest. Now - a completely different situation. In China, QR payments are dominant. There is a very high probability that when you try to pay in a street udon using UnionPay, you will run into the surprised face of Uncle Liao, who will show you a cardboard box with a QR code instead of an acquiring terminal. But UnionPay is actively expanding outside of China , primarily in the countries of Southeast and Central Asia (but not only).
In short, if in 2015 UnionPay's global leadership was based solely on the domestic Chinese market, now the Chinese system is a full-fledged global player. What will happen next if tensions between China and the West are likely to increase is a big question.
PS During the analysis, I could not find out whether UnionPay payment data is sent to the PDA and directly to the head of Comrade Xi. So, the question is open.
So, this is the Japanese payment system Japan Credit Bureau. It is the third largest card acceptance point in the world. And it was founded back in 1961, i.e. even earlier than Mastercard.
It is accepted in many countries, and before the clear events they took it from us. At one time, JCB even made a co-branded map with the world. However, I have never seen a real live JCB card in the Russian Federation (although some Russian banks actively issued them).
An interesting feature of JCB is direct conversion via both Japanese yen and Chinese yuan. Let me remind you: the conversion currency is the currency unit used by the payment system to convert a payment from your currency to the seller's currency. Therefore, JCB cards are very popular among entrepreneurs doing business with both Japan and China (they can save money by direct conversion). And also among travelers to Asian countries-in this region, JCB has a lot of partners as part of their loyalty program.
Did you know that Manchester United football club is so fucking popular in Asia? They say MYU bought Park Ji-sung and then Shinji Kagawa to promote in this part of the world. I even made a collaboration with JCB.
It is clear that after its launch in 2014 and up to the "great exodus" of Western companies from the Russian Federation, the WORLD was purely a parochial story and a map for state employees, pensioners and individual enthusiasts. Nevertheless, even then the WORLD was able to correctly promote within individual customer segments. For example, the campaign for football fans did quite well - the WORLD awarded increased cashback on the days of matches of the Russian national team (for goods at the stadium and various nishtyaki relevant to fans).
And already in 2018, MIR launched a full-fledged loyalty program with a wide range of partners, just like a real adult payment system.
By the way, there is one interesting nuance associated with Russian cards:
When Visa and Mastercard left the Russian Federation in the spring of 2022, their cards of Russian banks were transferred to the NSPK (this is the operator of the MIR payment system). Therefore, in Russia, these cards are essentially equal in rights with the WORLD cards.
However, some Western services-for example, travel services like Expedia - have started accepting those Visa and Mastercard cards of Russian banks again. This is explained by the fact that the NSPK and the MIR payment system itself are two different entities. The world has long been under severe sanctions, but the NSPK has not (only its gender has been affected there, but this does not count).
Therefore, formally, nothing prevents Western services from serving cards in the contour of the NSPK, but issued not by the world. I don't know if their creators deliberately separated the operator and the payment system itself. But the bug has clearly become a feature.
By the way, did you know that in Russia, even before the world, there was an internal payment system Union Card, which at one time was connected to almost 500 banks (although mostly the second or third echelon), and the number of issued cards reached almost 3 million? It was launched back in 1993, and in 2014 it was given the status of a "nationally significant payment system". However, in 2019 The Central Bank excluded Union Card from the register of payment systems, and this, as they say, was all its powers.
I will assume that the Central Bank excluded the Union Card from the register after seeing its design. Guys, I understand everything, it's 2003 - but you can't mock my eyes like that!
I want to say a few more words about the Golden Crown. Although Korona is more of a money transfer system, it can also issue cards.
It's hard for me to imagine how much this company has grown over the past year. Who knows, suddenly on the wave of growth, the guys from Corona will decide to gash a full-fledged payment system and compete with the WORLD (and competition, as you know, always benefits).
To support the new payment system, the Indian authorities have hit protectionism - for example, they have obliged all companies with revenues of more than $ 6 billion to accept RuPay cards, regardless of their desire. And Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speeches periodically emphasizes that " paying with RuPay cards is a service to the nation and the country, accessible to everyone."
In addition, India has come up with another good way to promote RuPay-they have launched the UPI payment service. This is a single payment interface for online payments and transfers, which any company can easily connect to via the API. Thus, the Indians everywhere see the same form of payment and will definitely not get confused. In addition, UPI can save map data, ensuring complete seamless operation. Western payment systems also want to get into the scheme, but they are not allowed to do so yet.
One interface to rule all of them. Convenient, well done. The world and the SBP would also like that. However, the world and SBP and compete in the market with no one...
Now RuPay accounts for about 60% of all cards issued in India (you can figure out for yourself how much it doesn't matter), but only 34% of transactions by number and 30% by volume. Which hints at the popularity of RuPay among, let's say, ordinary people.
RuPay cards are accepted in many countries, including the United States and Europe, but they are especially popular, of course, in Asia. Integration of the Indian system with the world is also being discussed, but so far without specifics.
Humo is quite different from Uzcard. First, it pushes out the independence of banks with might and main. The bank chooses its own acquiring terminal, card configurations and features, and so on. And Humo itself only conducts interbank clearing, well, and is responsible for security and reliability (however, the reliability of Humo is so - so-the system often freezes and shuts down, Uzcard is better with this).
Cards of both systems are accepted everywhere in Uzbekistan, but when trying to pay with Visa / MC, some sellers may make a surprised face.
Both systems are not available outside the country, but Uzcard is actively developing co-branded cards - for example, there is Uzcard + UnionPay, and earlier Uzcard+MIR was still there, but the whole world was released.
And you can also transfer money to both cards from Russian non-sanctioned banks without these your swifts and golden crowns, but directly. It does not work with all Uzbek banks, but with many.
There is one very funny moment in Uzbekistan. The seller or waiter asks for your card's PIN code and enters it himself. Moreover, they can easily ask you to shout the PIN code across the entire restaurant hall. I haven't seen this in other countries.
Until 2002, Iranians paid in the country with pieces of paper with a portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini, and for cross-border payments they used the old-fashioned method called "Hawala" (I also have an article about it, by the way). Yes, some Iranian banks issued their own payment cards, but they had a narrow application, because they worked only with ATMs and terminals of these banks.
In 2002, they decided to build their own nationwide payment system called Shetab. At that time, Iran became the 4th country in the world with its own system-after the United States, Japan and China. After the creation of Shetab, Iran integrated with some Eastern countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. And also with some Chinese banks, but there are nuances and restrictions.
Shetab has one interesting feature. It is no secret that Iran is a deeply Islamic country. And in Islam, credit is not very honored. According to the canons of Islamic banking, loans and other transactions with interest are called "rib a" and are recognized as haram.
Indeed, the vast majority of Shetab cards are debit cards. But not all of them. You still have credit cards. Rather, they are not exactly credit cards. These cards use a special Islamic transaction called "murabaha". It works something like this:
I wonder if Iranian celebrities advertise Shetab cards on central TV channels with a six-month no extra charge for murabaha?
Let's not forget about Belkart. Belarusians started developing their own system back in 1994 (launched in the early 2000s), and today almost 5 million cards have been issued in the country. Considering that the population of Belarus is 10 million, the penetration is very solid. As you can guess, pensions, all sorts of benefits and salaries of state employees are transferred to Belkart.
It is also worth remembering the Turkish Troy system, named after the very ancient city with the famous horse. Yes, the country is dominated by Mastercard and Visa, but Troy also has its own audience. I remember when last summer MIR Maps in Turkey said "oops", the issue of equipping Russian tourists with just Three flights was being worked out (but then the initiative stalled). The Turks know best how to use circumstances to their advantage.
We should not forget about the pride of Kazakhstan Kaspi Payments from the local Kaspi ecosystem. This is a QR-based system that is more like the Chinese WeChat Pay and AliPay than the Russian SBP. We will not discuss Chinese ecosystem payment instruments today, this is another big story (do you want me to write about them separately?).
We also mention the Belgian Bancontact. This is a national payment system that can both issue cards and cash them in a mobile application. Here is the Dutch iDEAL, but it is more about online payments, not cards.
Did you think that in Europe they take a Visa and a Master's Degree everywhere? An-no. You can't find Belgian waffles without a local card.
Brazil has its own system, and even two. Elo issues cards, and PIX is something like our SBP, only in addition to QR codes, you can also pay via NFC.
An exotic bonus. In addition to sharks, gorillas and angry crocodiles, Africa also has its own payment systems. And they have one interesting feature - they are all made on the basis of mobile operators. At some point, African telecoms realized that a significant proportion of the local population will not be easy to get used to these cards of yours, but everyone has a mobile phone. Therefore, they began to launch full-fledged financial directions on this basis. Here is the Nigerian fintech MoMo from Africa's largest mobile operator MTN, and Zambian JGO, and Kenyan SafariCom, and many others. No, of course, there are also Mastercard visas in Africa, but the share of such mobile payments there is higher than in our country, in the West or in Asia.
Totalitarian bonus. In 2015, the DPRK was granted the right to launch its own payment system. Nothing is known about it, not even its name. But now residents of North Korea can pay for a new portrait of the leader in a state department store with a plastic card (if there is money on it, of course). But I would still advise paying for some discs with Western films or BTS music in the back streets of Pyongyang only in cash...
Did you forget someone? Oh, yes, PayPal... But this is a slightly different story, and you can safely write a separate article about it.
Dear friends, I hope you enjoyed it and enjoyed it.
(c) https://habr.com/ru/articles/744126/
I'll say right away-there are a lot of payment systems in the world. Almost every country has its own, or even a whole scattering. But are you interested in reading about some Italian CartaSi or Danish Dancourt, when slightly less than all residents of these countries apply for Visas, Mastercards, or at least AmEx or UnionPay (recently)?
These are Schrodinger payment systems - they seem to exist, but they don't seem to exist. Therefore, we will not consider them. And we will analyze it:
- Or the largest and most popular payment systems with powerful paws. They have a lot of cardholders and significant transaction volumes, and they are also accepted at many retail outlets.
- Or the most unusual, colorful and interesting samples.
So, here we go:
An international giant and a global titan (and then let them decide who is who).
What brands do most people associate with the phrase "payment system"? That's right, with Visa and Mastercard.- The first one is a little bigger, the second one is a little smaller.
- They say that the first is slightly stronger in America and Asia, and the second-in Europe, but this is a myth, they are about the same.
- The first one was created in 1958 by Bank of America, and after some time began to give access to other banks. The second one was launched in 1966 by the association of several major American banks.
You know, when I was writing this section, I thought, " Now I'm going to unearth some sacred difference between two chairs... rather, systems." But the problem is that... it's gone!
I see the competition between Mastercard and Visa as something like this.
Of course, they are not completely identical. They have some minor differences in pricing for banks, in chargebacks policies, or in the corporate structure and approaches to business organization. But these are all nuances that are interesting only to professionals from the payment industry.
However, competition in the markets and the struggle for the heart of the consumer has not been canceled. This means that the differences should be in individual features and benefits for the client, as well as in marketing.
Among the features and advantages, I will highlight the following:
- Loyalty programs. Both systems have their own loyalty programs with their own unique partners in different countries (this is in addition to the loyalty program of the bank that issued the card). In my subjective opinion, Mastercard has a broader, more diverse and generally cooler program. Mastercard also has its own cool business lounges in many airports around the world. They allow owners of premium cards. When I worked at Mastercard, I also had such a pass. When I was flying on business, I wanted my flight to be delayed at one of these airports. But no, they flew like a Swiss watch, which would take them... But the flight was delayed for a day in a city where there was no business lounge, heh.
- Innovations. Mastercard is actively moving towards crypto, buying up startups and issuing special crypto cards. Or it improves personalized offers in stores and restaurants. Visa also does not sit still - it issues payment rings, buys startups for seamless data exchange with marketplaces, and much more (including crypto). However, Visa and Mastercard are equally active in innovation, but the specifics may vary.
Other major Americans, but with an important difference
The first is American Express. It was founded back in 1850. At first it was a transport company that issued traveler's checks, and the first payment card was issued in 1958. Now it is one of the largest payment systems, whose cards are accepted in 140+ countries around the world.The second is Discover. In the early 1980s, a major American supermarket chain, Sears, decided that customers weren't buying enough, and it would be a good idea to give them credit cards. As a result, we launched our own credit card - Discover Card. At first, the project was not very successful, but over the next couple of decades, Discover bought several payment players (for example, the Pulse interbank payment network in 2005, or the Diners Club payment system in 2008), and also entered into partnerships with many banks. And as a result, it turned into a full-fledged payment system, with its own bank, card issuance, blackjack, you know.
AmEx and Discover have one important difference from Visa and Mastercard.
The latter are engaged in making payments through their own payment engine, but they don't know how to issue payment cards themselves. And they don't interact with the end cardholders (i.e. us). You can't go to the Visa or Mastercard office and issue the card directly, but you will have to do it through some third party - a bank, fintech, a chain of stores, or, for example, an airline (depending on which card you are talking about). But AmEx and Discover can issue cards independently.
That is, they are payment systems and financial institutions (=banks) all rolled into one.
By the way, it is absorbed by DiscoverDiners Club can be called the oldest payment system in the world. It released its first map in 1950. And in general, this company is quite curious:
On the left is the same Frank McNamara. On the right - the first (or one of the first) Diners Club cards. As you can see, payment systems owe their appearance to two basic human qualities-a love of eating and a leaky memory.
Payment, system, card, udar!
Most recently, a landmark event occurred in the global payment industry - China's UnionPay overtook Visa in terms of processed transactions, becoming a new global leader.Let's talk about this very UnionPay. The system was founded in 2002 by the decision of the State Council of the People's Republic of China and the People's Bank of China. No American mergers and acquisitions, just a firm and clear decision of the party!
UnionPay is now accepted in 170+ countries, including the United States and Western Europe. However, not everywhere - especially the probability of having problems when paying with a Chinese card in Western online stores is high.
A fun purely Chinese fact. There are two hieroglyphs on the UnionPay logo. The first one means "association", the second one means "money". They were translated into English and named the card UnionPay. Attention question: What app translator was used for the second character?
The card connects to Apple Pay and Google Pay only in China (apparently, the local regulator pushed Apple and Google). In the rest of the world, it only works with Huawei Pay on devices of the same name.
UnionPay is very active in using co-paging, which is a kind of growth hack for them.
Here are some Uzbek kobages, one of them is just with UnionPay. This is a convenient tool for countries that have developed their own payment systems (and Master Cards and Visas do not work very well), but which are poorly accepted abroad.
I want to mention one important nuance. In 2015, UnionPay was already becoming a global leader in the volume of payments made. But back then, 99.5% of these payments were made inside China. In addition, UnionPay was still the main payment method in China at that time, and the positions of any QR payments via WeChat or Alipay were relatively modest. Now - a completely different situation. In China, QR payments are dominant. There is a very high probability that when you try to pay in a street udon using UnionPay, you will run into the surprised face of Uncle Liao, who will show you a cardboard box with a QR code instead of an acquiring terminal. But UnionPay is actively expanding outside of China , primarily in the countries of Southeast and Central Asia (but not only).
In short, if in 2015 UnionPay's global leadership was based solely on the domestic Chinese market, now the Chinese system is a full-fledged global player. What will happen next if tensions between China and the West are likely to increase is a big question.
PS During the analysis, I could not find out whether UnionPay payment data is sent to the PDA and directly to the head of Comrade Xi. So, the question is open.
Deadpan Samurai and Kawaii Anime cards
If a couple of years ago you paid attention to the shop window, where the logos of accepted cards are indicated, then among the others you probably noticed a strange 3 letters-JCB.So, this is the Japanese payment system Japan Credit Bureau. It is the third largest card acceptance point in the world. And it was founded back in 1961, i.e. even earlier than Mastercard.
It is accepted in many countries, and before the clear events they took it from us. At one time, JCB even made a co-branded map with the world. However, I have never seen a real live JCB card in the Russian Federation (although some Russian banks actively issued them).
An interesting feature of JCB is direct conversion via both Japanese yen and Chinese yuan. Let me remind you: the conversion currency is the currency unit used by the payment system to convert a payment from your currency to the seller's currency. Therefore, JCB cards are very popular among entrepreneurs doing business with both Japan and China (they can save money by direct conversion). And also among travelers to Asian countries-in this region, JCB has a lot of partners as part of their loyalty program.
Did you know that Manchester United football club is so fucking popular in Asia? They say MYU bought Park Ji-sung and then Shinji Kagawa to promote in this part of the world. I even made a collaboration with JCB.
Our everything (now exactly everything)
Well, here we are. Here I will not describe the basic things, I will focus only on the interesting ones.It is clear that after its launch in 2014 and up to the "great exodus" of Western companies from the Russian Federation, the WORLD was purely a parochial story and a map for state employees, pensioners and individual enthusiasts. Nevertheless, even then the WORLD was able to correctly promote within individual customer segments. For example, the campaign for football fans did quite well - the WORLD awarded increased cashback on the days of matches of the Russian national team (for goods at the stadium and various nishtyaki relevant to fans).
And already in 2018, MIR launched a full-fledged loyalty program with a wide range of partners, just like a real adult payment system.
By the way, there is one interesting nuance associated with Russian cards:
When Visa and Mastercard left the Russian Federation in the spring of 2022, their cards of Russian banks were transferred to the NSPK (this is the operator of the MIR payment system). Therefore, in Russia, these cards are essentially equal in rights with the WORLD cards.
However, some Western services-for example, travel services like Expedia - have started accepting those Visa and Mastercard cards of Russian banks again. This is explained by the fact that the NSPK and the MIR payment system itself are two different entities. The world has long been under severe sanctions, but the NSPK has not (only its gender has been affected there, but this does not count).
Therefore, formally, nothing prevents Western services from serving cards in the contour of the NSPK, but issued not by the world. I don't know if their creators deliberately separated the operator and the payment system itself. But the bug has clearly become a feature.
By the way, did you know that in Russia, even before the world, there was an internal payment system Union Card, which at one time was connected to almost 500 banks (although mostly the second or third echelon), and the number of issued cards reached almost 3 million? It was launched back in 1993, and in 2014 it was given the status of a "nationally significant payment system". However, in 2019 The Central Bank excluded Union Card from the register of payment systems, and this, as they say, was all its powers.
I will assume that the Central Bank excluded the Union Card from the register after seeing its design. Guys, I understand everything, it's 2003 - but you can't mock my eyes like that!
I want to say a few more words about the Golden Crown. Although Korona is more of a money transfer system, it can also issue cards.
It's hard for me to imagine how much this company has grown over the past year. Who knows, suddenly on the wave of growth, the guys from Corona will decide to gash a full-fledged payment system and compete with the WORLD (and competition, as you know, always benefits).
Indian Patriotic Cards
In 2012, India launched its own payment system, RuPay. "Ru", as you understand, because "rupees". Many thanks to our friends from India for having already taken this name a couple of years before the creation of the MIR system. Otherwise, you would understand...To support the new payment system, the Indian authorities have hit protectionism - for example, they have obliged all companies with revenues of more than $ 6 billion to accept RuPay cards, regardless of their desire. And Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speeches periodically emphasizes that " paying with RuPay cards is a service to the nation and the country, accessible to everyone."
In addition, India has come up with another good way to promote RuPay-they have launched the UPI payment service. This is a single payment interface for online payments and transfers, which any company can easily connect to via the API. Thus, the Indians everywhere see the same form of payment and will definitely not get confused. In addition, UPI can save map data, ensuring complete seamless operation. Western payment systems also want to get into the scheme, but they are not allowed to do so yet.
One interface to rule all of them. Convenient, well done. The world and the SBP would also like that. However, the world and SBP and compete in the market with no one...
Now RuPay accounts for about 60% of all cards issued in India (you can figure out for yourself how much it doesn't matter), but only 34% of transactions by number and 30% by volume. Which hints at the popularity of RuPay among, let's say, ordinary people.
RuPay cards are accepted in many countries, including the United States and Europe, but they are especially popular, of course, in Asia. Integration of the Indian system with the world is also being discussed, but so far without specifics.
Pilaf, Chevrolet and two payment systems
Sunny Uzbekistan has two own payment systems at once.- The first one is Uzcard. This is the most popular system in the country, and almost all residents have its cards. Uzcard was launched in 2004 with significant state participation, but relatively recently the state share of 75% was privatized.
- The second is Humo. It was established in 2018 and is fully owned by the Uzbek Central Bank.
Humo is quite different from Uzcard. First, it pushes out the independence of banks with might and main. The bank chooses its own acquiring terminal, card configurations and features, and so on. And Humo itself only conducts interbank clearing, well, and is responsible for security and reliability (however, the reliability of Humo is so - so-the system often freezes and shuts down, Uzcard is better with this).
Secondly, until recently there were free transfers between two Humo cards from different banks, but this feature was recently removed. Yes, it is in the Russian Federation that we were spoiled with huge limits on free transfers, and in Uzbekistan (and in many other countries), please pay a commission.
Cards of both systems are accepted everywhere in Uzbekistan, but when trying to pay with Visa / MC, some sellers may make a surprised face.
Both systems are not available outside the country, but Uzcard is actively developing co-branded cards - for example, there is Uzcard + UnionPay, and earlier Uzcard+MIR was still there, but the whole world was released.
And you can also transfer money to both cards from Russian non-sanctioned banks without these your swifts and golden crowns, but directly. It does not work with all Uzbek banks, but with many.
There is one very funny moment in Uzbekistan. The seller or waiter asks for your card's PIN code and enters it himself. Moreover, they can easily ask you to shout the PIN code across the entire restaurant hall. I haven't seen this in other countries.
Mysterious Iranian payments
As you can see, there are no Mastercard and Visa cards in Iran, and there never was. Yes, at the end of the tenth, it seems that it was possible to pay for purchases in some online stores with a Visa and a Master (but this is not accurate), but then Iran was flooded with sanctions, and timid attempts at integration came to naught.Until 2002, Iranians paid in the country with pieces of paper with a portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini, and for cross-border payments they used the old-fashioned method called "Hawala" (I also have an article about it, by the way). Yes, some Iranian banks issued their own payment cards, but they had a narrow application, because they worked only with ATMs and terminals of these banks.
In 2002, they decided to build their own nationwide payment system called Shetab. At that time, Iran became the 4th country in the world with its own system-after the United States, Japan and China. After the creation of Shetab, Iran integrated with some Eastern countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. And also with some Chinese banks, but there are nuances and restrictions.
Shetab has one interesting feature. It is no secret that Iran is a deeply Islamic country. And in Islam, credit is not very honored. According to the canons of Islamic banking, loans and other transactions with interest are called "rib a" and are recognized as haram.
Indeed, the vast majority of Shetab cards are debit cards. But not all of them. You still have credit cards. Rather, they are not exactly credit cards. These cards use a special Islamic transaction called "murabaha". It works something like this:
The essence of the loan is preserved, but there is no formal interest, so everyone is happy. Customers can spend more, and banks and stores count their profits.
I wonder if Iranian celebrities advertise Shetab cards on central TV channels with a six-month no extra charge for murabaha?
Other systems worth mentioning
In fact, there are still many payment systems in the world with a fairly large market share in their respective countries. Here it is worth mentioning, for example, Korti Milli from Tajikistan, Armenian Card (ArCa) and Vietnamese BankNet. The latter two, by the way, are integrated with the NSPK, i.e. the cards of these systems and MIR cards were mutually accepted in acquiring terminals and it was possible to transfer money directly. But then, in the summer of 2022, the shop was closed down due to sanctions.Let's not forget about Belkart. Belarusians started developing their own system back in 1994 (launched in the early 2000s), and today almost 5 million cards have been issued in the country. Considering that the population of Belarus is 10 million, the penetration is very solid. As you can guess, pensions, all sorts of benefits and salaries of state employees are transferred to Belkart.
It is also worth remembering the Turkish Troy system, named after the very ancient city with the famous horse. Yes, the country is dominated by Mastercard and Visa, but Troy also has its own audience. I remember when last summer MIR Maps in Turkey said "oops", the issue of equipping Russian tourists with just Three flights was being worked out (but then the initiative stalled). The Turks know best how to use circumstances to their advantage.
We should not forget about the pride of Kazakhstan Kaspi Payments from the local Kaspi ecosystem. This is a QR-based system that is more like the Chinese WeChat Pay and AliPay than the Russian SBP. We will not discuss Chinese ecosystem payment instruments today, this is another big story (do you want me to write about them separately?).
We also mention the Belgian Bancontact. This is a national payment system that can both issue cards and cash them in a mobile application. Here is the Dutch iDEAL, but it is more about online payments, not cards.
Did you think that in Europe they take a Visa and a Master's Degree everywhere? An-no. You can't find Belgian waffles without a local card.
Brazil has its own system, and even two. Elo issues cards, and PIX is something like our SBP, only in addition to QR codes, you can also pay via NFC.
An exotic bonus. In addition to sharks, gorillas and angry crocodiles, Africa also has its own payment systems. And they have one interesting feature - they are all made on the basis of mobile operators. At some point, African telecoms realized that a significant proportion of the local population will not be easy to get used to these cards of yours, but everyone has a mobile phone. Therefore, they began to launch full-fledged financial directions on this basis. Here is the Nigerian fintech MoMo from Africa's largest mobile operator MTN, and Zambian JGO, and Kenyan SafariCom, and many others. No, of course, there are also Mastercard visas in Africa, but the share of such mobile payments there is higher than in our country, in the West or in Asia.
Totalitarian bonus. In 2015, the DPRK was granted the right to launch its own payment system. Nothing is known about it, not even its name. But now residents of North Korea can pay for a new portrait of the leader in a state department store with a plastic card (if there is money on it, of course). But I would still advise paying for some discs with Western films or BTS music in the back streets of Pyongyang only in cash...
Did you forget someone? Oh, yes, PayPal... But this is a slightly different story, and you can safely write a separate article about it.
Dear friends, I hope you enjoyed it and enjoyed it.
(c) https://habr.com/ru/articles/744126/
