The MIR payment system logo is displayed at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in Saint Petersburg, Russia June 2, 2021. REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina/File Photo

MOSCOW, July 27 (Reuters) – Iran will soon start accepting payments made with Russian Mir bank cards, a senior official was quoted as saying by Russian news agency RIA, making it the latest country to adopt the Russian alternative to Visa (VN) and Mastercard (MA.N).

“I think this payment system will soon be activated in Iran,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Diplomacy Medhi Safari told RIA on Wednesday.

Moscow has moved to forge close ties with Tehran since sending tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine on February 24 as the Kremlin, decried as a pariah in the West, tries to build new economic and diplomatic partnerships elsewhere.

South Korea and Cuba also recently started accepting Mir – which means both “peace” and “world” in Russian – and the United Arab Emirates intends to start accepting it soon. The cards also work in popular tourist destinations in Turkey and Vietnam and some former Soviet republics.

Russia and Iran are under heavy US and European sanctions that have blocked their access to key parts of the global financial infrastructure.

The two are also working to create a rival for the SWIFT payments messaging service that underpins cross-border payments in the global economy, Safari said. Several Russian banks have been kicked out of Belgium-based SWIFT since February 24.

“Countries that want to de-dollarize their transactions must have a special system similar to SWIFT,” Safari quoted RIA as saying.

“The Iranian and Russian sides have each offered an option… We have reached a very good agreement on the basis of which we can carry out monetary transactions between the two countries.”

Russian cards issued by Visa and Mastercard stopped working abroad after the world’s two largest payment processing networks suspended operations in early March. Read more

Reuters Editing reporting by Mark Heinrich

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