Mastercard plans to reduce the processing time for foreign currency payments

The international company Mastercard has changed its policy of converting funds when paying with cards in dollars or euros for products the cost of which is presented in other currencies. An innovation which allows the transfer of funds to be carried out at the exchange rate at the time of the purchase, and not with a delay of one to three days will be rolled out on August 11. The payment system sent the corresponding notification to Russian banks, writes Forbes.

Mastercard chose innovation to improve the customer experience. Thus, it plans to make the process of currency exchange more transparent.

At the moment, when purchasing goods with a currency card, funds are converted in the real-time with processing the transaction at the appropriate rate. As a rule, there is a several-day delay between banks. As a result, a larger or smaller amount may be debited from the card.

Natalya Rogova, head of the Promsvyazbank department for managing payment cards, said that the bank had already received a notification. She also said that the bank doesn’t need significant reconfigurations for the introduction of the new mechanism.

According to her words, these changes will be beneficial to citizens who often make purchases abroad, since now they will be able to objectively calculate their spending. Those who make purchases abroad using ruble cards will not be affected by the innovations. Then the conversion will take place in 2-3 days.

Alma Obaeva, head of the board of the National Payments Council, noted that the changes will be beneficial primarily to citizens who often have vacation abroad. Namely, in South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam or Russia, where national currencies are volatile in comparison with the dollar or euro.

Natalia Rakova, head of the financial sector consulting group at KPMG, said that such a decision should attract clients to Mastercard, as there are many companies with more favorable conditions for paying for goods. She also noted that one should expect similar decisions from other payment systems.