Russian banks plan to market payment stickers with an NFC chip, which are designed to replace foreign contactless payment services that became unavailable to Russians after the invasion of Ukraine, reports Meduza.

According to RBC, Russia’s leading financial broadcaster, the payment stickers will look like smaller bank cards that can be stuck to a phone, and several Russian banks have already announced plans to implement them.

Among them are Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, Tinkoff, a bank founded by Russian tycoon Oleg Tynkov, who fled to the West, and Alfa Bank, founded by Mikhail Fridman, a Russian oligarch who complained that he was left without sources of income after Western sanctions were imposed on him.

RBC reports that Sberbank plans to launch mass testing of the service at the beginning of February, the pilot program will cover 100,000 people, after which the bank will publish payment stickers for all its customers.

Alfa-Bank has already announced the start of distribution of the first stickers in its Telegram channel. The bank’s press service confirmed that it is not just about testing, but about the launch of a new service for customers.

Visa and Mastercard payment systems stopped operating in Russia after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, due to which bank cards issued by Russian banks are no longer accepted abroad, nor in foreign stores, nor in Apple Pay and Google Pay services.

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