Kaspost stops working with Russian Unistream, Nurbank doesn’t

The Kazakhstan postal service Kaspost has stopped processing money transfers going through the Russian payment system Unistream, which has been put on the sanctions list. However, an operator of the call center of Nurbank told Kursiv that the bank is still working with the payment system.

What happened? As an operator of Kazpost told the Kursiv edition, the company has suspended processing money transfers via Unistream. The press service of Kazpost confirmed this information.

«Since July 21, 2023, Kazpost JSC has suspended supporting money transfers by Unistream, which has been included on the international sanctions list,» Kazpost said.

In turn, Unistream has removed Kazpost branch offices from its list of partners. Nurbank branch offices are still on this list though.

The call center of Nurbank said that the bank continues to cooperate with the service, although the bank’s press service did not respond at the time of this article’s publication.”

The context. The U.S. government has introduced sanctions against five more Russian credit organizations – Tinkoff, Lockobank, Petersburg Social Commercial Bank, Solidarity Bank and Unistream.

Why sanctions? Russian unleashed a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In response, the U.S. and EU have imposed a range of anti-Russian sanctions covering almost all spheres.

Who else has done the same move? According to the TASS news agency, two banks in Uzbekistan Ipoteka Bank and Xalq Bank (the biggest bank in the country) have also suspended their cooperation with Unistream.

«Xalq Bank and Ipoteka Bank have suspended cooperation with the international payment system Unistream due to technical reasons. The remaining banks in the country are expected to make a decision on the issue soon,» a representative of Uzbekistan’s Central Bank said.

Earlier this month, several banks in Armenia and Kyrgyzstan also stopped working with Unistream due to the international sanctions against Russia.