Apple has closed a loophole that had allowed some Russians to continue using its mobile payments service despite the ongoing economic sanctions against Russia. According to Reuters, the company told the country's largest lender on Thursday it would no longer support Russia's homegrown Mir payments system through Apple Pay.

"Apple has informed NSPK it is suspending support for Mir cards in the Apple Pay payment service," the National Card Payment System said Friday. "Starting from March 24th, users cannot add new Mir cards to the service. Apple will stop all operations of previously added cards over the next few days."

Google took similar action last week as well. According to a separate report from The Wall Street Journal, the company paused a pilot that had allowed Russians to connect their Mir cards to Google Pay. "Google Pay is pausing payments-related services in Russia as a result of payment services disruption out of our control," a Google spokesperson told the outlet.

https://www.engadget.com/apple-pay-google-pay-mir-loophole-closed-191434174.html

Reality is totally different, actually Google and Apple first assured local clients that Mir will work and improved its support since western cards left.

But after direct order from government they had been forced to inform local users that they have some unknown technical difficulties :-) Yes, to local smartphone users they told totally different thing!