Apple Pay now completely blocks Russia’s Mir payment system

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Apple has rolled out updates that completely prevent the Russian payment system Mir from working with its Apple Pay service.

Users with Mir cards will no longer be able to add them to Apple Wallet and ones already added to the service will be removed or disabled in the coming days.

Prior to this change, there was a loophole of sorts that let users still use Apple Pay if purchases were processed only via Mir.

Visa, Mastercard and American Express have locked down their payment networks so that Russian-issued cards will no longer work on it. Paying with any card issued worldwide that sports one of these networks’ logos is no longer possible in Russia either.

These companies do not issue cards, but rather license their names to banks who then use Visa, Mastercard or AmEx’s network to processing payments electronically.

Russia is reportedly exploring China’s UnionPay as an alternative integration with Mir to make it easier to process payments, but this process would require issuing new cards.

Meanwhile, Google said it is halting a trial of integrating its payment service with Mir.