UAE Airlines Start Accepting Russian Credit Cards Again

Visa and MasterCard pulled out of Russia nearly a year ago, when Russia launched its brutal unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine

According to the latest reports, United Arab Emirates airlines – Emirates, Air Arabia and flydubai have now resumed accepting customer payments by MasterCard and Visa cards issued by Russian banks.

Source in Russia said that Russian customers are now able to use Russia’s Faster Payments System (SBP), when booking flights on UAE carriers.

Air Arabia tickets can now be paid for through the SBP system with a 6% commission charged on the total amount for each ticket issued. A reservation for tickets is taken on the carrier’s website, then after a call from support service the customer receives a link to finalize the operation.

Flydubai reportedly conducts transactions through an authorized agent with an additional fee of 2,000 rubles ($24.50), while Emirates offers the opportunity to pay for tickets using a QR code system, but this can only be done for the purchase of tickets at least ten days prior to departure.

Russia’s domestic Faster Payment System (FPS) was launched by the country’s central bank in 2019. It allows customers to make transfers between banks using a phone number tied to an account. Card-to-card transfers are also available for transactions within a credit institution.

After Visa and MasterCard pulled out of Russia nearly a year ago, when Russia launched its brutal unprovoked war of aggression against neighboring Ukraine, the cards of those international payment systems, issued domestically, were no longer accepted outside of Russian Federation and on foreign websites.

Turkish Airlines – the national flag carrier airline of Turkey, has reportedly also been planning to resume accepting Russian-issued credit cards from its customers.