YEREVAN, April 18. /ARKA/. Neither the Central Bank nor the Armenian government dreamed of banning Russian Mir cards on the territory of Armenia, Babken Tunyan, deputy chairman of the  National Assembly Committee on Economic Affairs, said today.

"The structure that made this decision felt that it is necessary to restrict Mir cards in our country. However, these cards can be used through VTB Bank’s ATMs or POS terminals," Tunyan said to the Public Television of Armenia.

Armenian commercial banks since March 30 have stopped processing payments by Mir cards. The exception is  VTB Bank (Armenia), a subsidiary of Russian VTB bank.

The Armenian payment system ArCa notified the Russian National Payment Card System (operator of Mir cards) about this decision of commercial banks in advance. -0-