Russia frees ex-con to build national payment system

In the latest twist concerning the Russia/Ukraine/Crimea situation, it has been reported that the head of a Russian payments company, who was imprisoned in 2013 for organising a cyberattack on a rival’s website, has been released early in exchange for helping to build Russia’s new national payments system.

Russia is to build a domestic payment system

ChronoPay co-founder Pavel Vrublevsky was sentenced to prison after being convicted of hiring botmasters to attack a rival processing firm. However, Vrublevsky has now been freed as part of a deal to help build Russia’s new national payment system.

Russian president Vladimir Putin announced the establishment of a national payment system to compete with Visa and MasterCard earlier this year, in the wake of a wave of sanctions and counter-sanctions affecting card processing services of Russian banks.