Visa and Mastercard have announced that they will no longer service card transactions executed in Crimea. “Due to the latest U.S. sanctions imposed against Crimea by [Barack Obama’s] Executive Order of Dec. 19, 2014, Visa is now prohibited from offering Visa-branded products and services to Crimea,” a statement issued by Visa on Boxing Day confirmed.”This means that we can no longer support card issuing and merchant/ATM acquiring services in Crimea.” A similar statement was also issued by MasterCard shortly afterwards. rbth