01 THE HOUR
00:01
Thursday, March 10, 2022, Moscow time
At one minute past midnight, Visa blocked all issuing and acquiring associated with all Russian members. Mastercard had announced the same cutoff for the same hour. Every Visa and Mastercard card issued by a Russian bank stopped working abroad and at foreign online merchants.
Inside Russia, those same cards kept working. The domestic switch, run by the Central Bank through its National Payment Card System, went on routing every in-country transaction as it had for nearly seven years.
02 THE SEQUENCE
Feb 24 The US Treasury imposed correspondent and payable-through account sanctions on Sberbank, Russia's largest bank by assets, and full blocking sanctions on VTB, the second largest. Visa and Mastercard were required to sever access for institutions designated as Specially Designated Nationals.
Feb 25 The Central Bank of Russia issued a statement: cards issued by sanctioned banks would lose the ability to work abroad and through Apple Pay and Google Pay, but all bank payment cards would continue to operate inside Russia without limitations. The domestic processing infrastructure was already carrying every in-country card transaction.
Feb 28 Bank of Russia Governor Nabiullina stated that the National Payment Card System processed the entire traffic on payment cards inside Russia, and that a separate financial messaging system could replace SWIFT for domestic interbank transfers.
Mar 5 Visa and Mastercard announced full suspension of all Russia operations. Visa stated that once complete, cards issued in Russia would no longer work outside the country, and cards issued outside Russia would no longer work within it.
Mar 6 The Central Bank issued a statement confirming that all Visa and Mastercard cards issued by Russian banks would continue to operate normally inside Russia until their expiry dates. Mastercard updated its own statement the same day, clarifying that all domestic transactions in Russia were mandated to be processed over a switch run by the central bank, and that once its network services were suspended, it would have no ability to block those transactions.
Mar 10 At 00:01 Moscow time, Visa blocked all issuing and acquiring for Russian members. The CBR confirmed that cards would operate as normal inside Russia but would no longer function abroad or at foreign online stores. Apple Pay and Google Pay became unavailable for Russian-issued Visa and Mastercard cards.
Mar 12 The EU regulation removing seven Russian banks from SWIFT took effect. Sberbank was not among the seven; it was removed separately in June under the sixth sanctions package.

Walmart, the war in Iran, and a margarita on the beach

Five years from now, there are going to be two types of retirees in America.

One is greeting strangers at Walmart in a blue vest. Not because they want to. Because the war in Iran was the first domino that knocked their retirement sideways and they never saw it coming.

The other is sitting on a beach with a margarita. Not because they got lucky. Because they understood what the Iran war was really about and made one simple move.

Here's what most people are missing.

The war in Iran isn't about nukes. It's about oil being sold in yuan instead of dollars.

Every barrel that leaves the dollar system makes your savings worth less. And 40 countries are following Iran's lead.

The retiree at Walmart kept everything in the same 401(k) their advisor set up ten years ago. They watched the dollar weaken. They watched inflation eat their savings. They hoped somebody in Washington would fix it. Nobody did.

The retiree on the beach moved a portion of their retirement into the one asset that goes up when the dollar goes down. Took 15 minutes. No taxes. No penalties. And they slept fine while everyone else panicked.

Same starting point. Same savings. One decision made the difference.

A free report called "The Great Gold Reset" shows you exactly what the Iran war means for your dollars, why it's accelerating a shift that was already underway, and the simple move that separates the Walmart greeters from the beach retirees.

Download Your Free Report Here
03 THE HIDDEN DEPENDENCY
Before 2014, about 90 percent of all payments in Russia routed through the Visa or Mastercard international network. When Crimea sanctions led those networks to block cards at four Russian banks in March 2014, the failure was immediate: cardholders at Bank Rossiya, Sobinbank, SMP Bank and InvestKapitalBank found their cards declined without notice.
The response took 15 months. By May 2014, amendments to the Law on the National Payment System required all international card networks to transfer their Russian transaction processing to a domestically operated switch. NSPK was established in July 2014 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Central Bank. By June 2015, both Visa and Mastercard had completed the transfer.
When the full suspension arrived in March 2022, the domestic rail had already been routing every in-country card transaction for nearly seven years. The international network withdrew; the domestic switch did not notice.
The international network withdrew; the domestic switch did not notice.
04 WHAT STILL WORKED
DOMESTIC CARD TRANSACTIONS ON VISA AND MASTERCARD BRANDED CARDS
Russian-issued Visa and Mastercard cards continued to process payments at merchants and ATMs inside Russia, routed through NSPK. The Central Bank confirmed on March 6 that these cards would function until their expiry dates.
MIR CARD NETWORK
The Mir payment card, issued by NSPK since December 2015, operated on fully domestic infrastructure. In 2017, a law required state employees and pension recipients to transition to Mir cards by 2018 and 2020. Over 100 million Mir cards had been issued by the time the international networks withdrew.
DOMESTIC INTERBANK MESSAGING
The System for Transfer of Financial Messages, built by the Central Bank from 2014 as a domestic alternative to SWIFT, continued to carry interbank messaging inside Russia after selected banks were removed from SWIFT on March 12.
05 THE DOCUMENT
THE DOCUMENT
Mastercard statement, updated March 6, 2022
Mastercard updated its suspension statement on March 6 with a paragraph that named the operational split: "all domestic transactions in Russia are mandated to be processed over a switch run by the central bank. Once the suspension of Mastercard network services is completed in the coming days, the company will have nothing to do with these transactions, including any ability to block them."
The statement made explicit what the architecture had been for years: the network whose brand appeared on the card had no role in the domestic transaction.
06 THE PATTERN LIBRARY
#1
When one retail withdrawal channel closes or fails, demand concentrates on whichever channel is left open, and the capacity of that channel sets what a depositor can obtain.
Observed: Northern Rock 2007, Cyprus 2013, India 2016, Greece 2015, United States 1933, Argentina 2001, Lebanon 2019, Worldpay 2026, TSB 2018, Afghanistan 2021, Nigeria 2023, Square 2023, United States 2025, Fiserv 2025, United States 2021, RBS Group 2012, Soviet Union 1991, Russia 2022.
#2
A currency replacement can require physical work on every unit of the estate before the new money can circulate, whether a modification to each cash dispensing machine or a stamp affixed to each note, so the changeover proceeds piece by piece rather than all at once.
Observed: India 2016, Czechoslovakia 1993, Soviet Union 1991.
#4
Domestic payment channels can continue while cross-border wire transfer routes fail. Where credit card settlement runs through a separate institution on an independent network, it may persist after the wire transfer channel closes. In some cases the central bank intermediates selected transfers through its own remaining correspondent accounts.
Observed: Iceland 2008, Germany 1931, Belize 2015, Russia 2022.
#9
A payment outage can hit card authorisation and merchant funding as separate faults, so acceptance at the terminal is restored while the money owed to the merchant arrives a day late under its own incident notice.
Observed: Worldpay 2026, United States 2021, Marqeta 2026, Square 2023.
#36
A domestic card processing switch built to mirror the functions of an international card network can preserve domestic card transactions when the international network withdraws, because the switch routes in-country authorisations without touching the international network's infrastructure.
Observed: Russia 2022.
CHANGED TODAY: Entries 1 and 4 gained Russia 2022. New entry 36 added, on the domestic processing switch that preserved in-country card transactions after the international networks withdrew.