Finance & economics | Homegrown fare

Russia cultivates alternatives to Western financial firms

Abroad, though, their homegrown firms are minnows

More than a mere bank card

THE PRIDE of Russian nationalists was sorely wounded as the Soviet Union crumbled. Russia without communism was not just more like its foe the West, but the country also became beholden to Western financial architecture as it adopted capitalism. Visa and Mastercard established a comfortable bank-card duopoly. And SWIFT, a Belgian interbank-messaging network, was enlisted for domestic transactions as well as cross-border ones.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Homegrown fare”

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