MOSCOW, July 02. /ITAR-TASS/. International payment system Visa will stay in Russia and has announced a tender to choose a partner who will pay a deposit with Russia's Central Bank (CBR) for the company, business daily Kommersant reported, citing banking sources.

“The initial plan was to send an invitation not only to Universal Electronic Card (UEC) and Golden Crown, but to other major processing companies as well, but when the Central Bank said that only these two will be appointed as nationally important, it is natural that they became a priority,” the source said.

One of Visa’s conditions for the tender is the contractors’ readiness to provide a deposit to the CBR if the contractor fails to process all Visa cards and will not obtain a nationally important status by October 31, a source close to the CBR said, cited by the business daily.

In May, President Vladimir Putin signed a law ordering to establish a national payment system after Visa and MasterCard stopped servicing cards of some Russian banks as part of US and EU sanctions against the country. The law came into effect on Tuesday.

Soon after the new law was signed, Visa and MasterCard were told to pay pledges amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars by October 31.