Apple confirms that Apple Pay is no longer supported for Russian bank

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Paying with Apple Pay
Paying with Apple Pay (Image credit: Pexels)

What you need to know

  • Apple has updated its Apple Pay support website.
  • The website removed the Russian bank of Novikombank from its list of supported banks.
  • A number of Russian banks have been sanctioned in response to the Ukraine invasion.

Apple is dropping Russian-sanctioned banks from its list of supported banks for Apple Pay.

A post from the Twitter account SupportDiffs showed that Apple removed Novikombank, one of the banks that was included in sanctions, from its list of Apple Pay-supported banks.

Apple updated "Apple Pay participating banks in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East"

If you go to the Apple Support website for Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, Apple has removed Novikombank from the list of banks that support Apple Pay in the areas.

After the sanctions from the United States were announced last week, customers of affected Russian banks noticed that Apple Pay (and other digital payment services like Google Pay) had stopped working in Russia.

Those banks' customers wouldn't be able to use their cards abroad, or to make online payments to companies registered in countries that have issued sanctions, the Central Bank said.

Now, it appears that Apple is cutting off those banks from Apple Pay outside of the country as well. These are currently the banks that are currently part of the sanctions (as per the previous report):

  • VTB Group
  • Sovcombank
  • Novikombank
  • Promsvyazbank
  • Otkritie

While Apple Pay is no longer available, customers of those banks should still be able to use their physical card and contactless payment with the card if it supports NFC. However, as more countries adopt sanctions against Russia and its banks, customers could find fewer and fewer places to use their debit and credit cards issued by affected banks.

Sanctions continue to mount against Russia and its leadership after the country invaded Ukraine last week.

Joe Wituschek
Joe Wituschek
Contributor

Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.