Despite threats from the European Union and the United States, Russia ignored it and decided to invade Ukraine. After the invasion, the American and European governments have imposed a series of economic sanctions on the country which includes restrictions on transactions of Russian banks outside the country.
The result of this restriction means that both Apple Pay and Google Pay, have ceased to function in the country. As reported by the Central Bank of Russia, five large Russian banks have seen their international operations restricted due to sanctions from other countries, preventing their customers from using their cards abroad.
They can't do either transfer of money to companies that are in the European Union and in the United States.
The banks affected by are: VTB Group, Sovcombank, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank and Otkritie. The Central Bank of Russia states that the cards issued by these five banks do not work with Apple Pay or Google Pay, since both platforms are based in the United States.
Russian users can continue to use the cards issued by these banks in Russia without any problem, but not through the digital wallets of the Cupertino-based company or Google.
A few days ago, the Vice President of Ukraine sent a public letter via Twitter to Apple so that the company will take out both the App Store and the Mac App Store, a decision of which at the moment has not been pronounced.
This decision would harm the users (who would not be able to install any application as we all know). But, according to the Ukrainian vice president, it would make users will rise up against the government demanding that he abandon the invasion of Ukraine, something very unlikely.