Statement regarding situation Ukraine

Buckaroo is shocked by the recent events in Ukraine. First and for all we hope the situation will normalize as soon as possible for all citizens in Ukraine and their family members around the world.

As a licensed financial institution in the Netherlands, Buckaroo is closely monitoring the situation in Ukraine and is obliged to follow the relevant instructions from the Dutch Government as well as the EU and UN when it comes to sanctions. Buckaroo in its monitoring also embedded the OFAC List (sanction list of the United States) to adhere to the rules for processing USD currency. Next to that, Buckaroo closely monitors the publications and instructions by other relevant payment schemes, such as Visa and MasterCard.

With the EU imposing sanctions on several Russian citizens and companies and Visa and MasterCard blocking several Russian financial institutions from their payment network, it is to be expected that a transaction which is matched to a citizen or company on the sanction list, or a financial institution blocked by Visa and Mastercard, will be blocked by the payments network. In the unlikely event a payment is received (and not blocked by any party in the payment chain) Buckaroo will freeze the funds of such transaction.

Buckaroo has no presence in Russia or Ukraine and has no merchants processing from these countries. The (business) exposure for Buckaroo, Buckaroo staff, Buckaroo merchants and Buckaroo suppliers is therefore very limited.

Saturday evening, March 5th 2022, both Visa and Mastercard announced that with immediate effect transactions for credit-cards issued in Russia will no longer be able to be processed by non-Russian merchants, payment service companies and acquirers.

It is to be expected that any authorization request for Russian issues credit-cards for merchants outside Russia will be denied via the Visa and Mastercard card-schemes.

As Buckaroo processes all transactions via European or British acquirers, it is to be expected all authorization request for consumers using Russian issued card will be denied.

As Buckaroo awaits formal communication via its partners (acquirers) we have no additional information yet, an update will be post as soon as information is received.

As of Sunday 20 March, the EU sanctions previously in force for Russia also apply to transactions from and to Belarus. This means that transactions by consumers where the underlying payment account is located in Russia or Belarus or the location of the consumer is in one of these two countries must be refused by Buckaroo or the underlying payment method owner.

This not only concerns credit card transactions but all payment methods where the consumer's location is in Russia or Belarus or where the payment method used is issued in Russia or Belarus.