The Unified Republican Processing Center (URPC, Uzcard brand) confirmed that as of today, September 23, from 9:00 am, banks suspended servicing Mir cards in ATMs and points of sale "due to the necessary technical procedures on the side of the participant of the Uzcard payment system."
The company said that Uzcard-Mir co-badged cards (cards that simultaneously work with two systems) are serviced normally in Uzcard infrastructure. The restrictions affected only Mir cards issued outside of Uzbekistan, as well as Uzcard-Mir co-badged cards abroad.
Meanwhile, banks that are issuing Uzcard-Mir co-badged cards have begun to remove information about this from their websites. Since September 21, Turobank, Mikrokreditbank and Halq Bank have removed sections on the issuance of such cards.
On Thursday, Turonbank call center told Gazeta.uz that this was due to the “technical work of the system,” but did not indicate when they would be completed.
Information about Uzcard-Mir co-badged cards is still on the websites of NBU, Aloqabank and Qishloq Qurilish Bank.
For the second time since the beginning of the year, that the URPC has temporarily suspended servicing Mir cards. In March, Uzcard stopped working with them for five days, citing technical reasons, while co-badged cards were accepted as usual, Spot notes.
This week, some banks in Kazakhstan, Armenia, Turkey and Vietnam have limited servicing Mir cards amid a warning from the US Treasury Department about the risks of secondary sanctions.
The Central Bank of Uzbekistan has not yet commented on the situation.
