The international payment system MasterCard has sent a notice to Russian banks that the company is changing its commission on cross-border transactions, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported bankers as saying.

The biggest adverse change banks will face concerns the cost for processing cross-border transactions; fees will grow by 130% in April to 0.4% per transaction from 0.175%. In addition, if a Russian bank services a card released by a foreign bank, the commission will be even higher at 0.5%, up 180%.

Unlike transactions that occur inside Russia, for which international payment systems transfer processing to Russia's National Payment Card System, the international systems will continue carrying out cross-border transactions themselves. In this way, the payment systems will be able to compensate the profit lost by transferring processing to the Russian system through competitive advantage in the segment of cross-border operations, Kommersant added.

The changes concern transactions that take place inside Russia as well. MasterCard refused to peg tariffs on authorization and clearing for cross-border operations, as well as transactions that take place inside Russia, to their amount; in other words, a higher number of transactions does not translate into a cheaper per-transaction cost. In addition, MasterCard has chosen a linear scale that depends solely on the size of the operation.

These changes worried bankers, and representatives from of some of the largest banks said they were prepared to discuss the changes directly with MasterCard, Kommersant wrote.