Per another comment, the massive effort has already happened over the preceding years, out of the expectation that something like this was going to happen sooner or later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30572790
> But that would still mean that the system would be cut off from the rest of the world
Could Russian banks adopt China's UnionPay as an alternative to Visa/MasterCard? UnionPay is already accepted in many Western countries due to the desire to gain the business of Chinese nationals (tourists, business travellers, international students, etc). Would it be technically possible for a Western intermediary processor to distinguish a Russian UnionPay card from a Chinese one?
