Card payment giants Visa and Mastercard announced on Saturday they will suspend operations in Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, AFP reported.
"Noting the unprecedented nature of the current conflict and the uncertain economic environment," Mastercard said it had "decided to suspend our network services in Russia."
Visa, for its part, said that "effective immediately" it would "work with its clients and partners within Russia to cease all Visa transactions over the coming days."
Visa and Mastercard had already announced that they were complying with US and international sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of its attack.
"Our colleagues, our customers and our partners have been affected in ways that most of us could not imagine," Mastercard said, stating that its cards issued by Russian banks would no longer be supported by the company's network.
Visa similarly said that cards issued in Russia would no longer work outside the country.
Both companies said cards issued abroad would no longer work in Russia.
Russia has been slapped with sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Shortly after the invasion started, EU leaders agreed to impose new economic sanctions on Russia, freezing Russian assets in the bloc and halting its banks' access to European financial markets.
A day later, the EU announced a freeze on the assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, as well as on his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
World leaders also decided to cut off Russian financial institutions from using the SWIFT money transfer system.
The EU also added top Kremlin-linked oligarchs to its sanctions blacklist, targeting some of the key moneymen accused of backing Putin's regime.