The war in Ukraine and your banking affairs

Payment transactions with Russia are becoming increasingly difficult, both in euro (EUR) and in US dollar (USD), as both the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) have imposed sanctions on transactions with certain regions in Ukraine. It mainly concerns Crimea and the oblasts of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. The US measures are stricter in some aspects, which means that USD payments will be rejected more often than EUR payments. In practice, banks actively analyze which areas are under Russian control, and transactions with those areas can be rejected. ABN AMRO is also keeping a finger on the pulse, in order to avoid that transactions of our clients are rejected by US banks for example.
Payments in RUB will no longer be processed by ABN AMRO from 1 June 2025 onwards. The clients who use this service have been informed separately.

It will become more difficult for ABN AMRO account holders to receive payments from Russia and Belarus due to the SWIFT measures in place. Transactions in RUB will be returned to the payer from 1 June 2025 onwards.

With the exception of the banks that have been expelled from the SWIFT banking network, other banks in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine can still receive our payment instructions. However, we cannot guarantee whether and how quickly they will process these payments. 

Since the expulsion of a number of banks from the SWIFT network on 20 March 2022, we are no longer able to process incoming or outgoing SWIFT transactions with these banks and their clients. See the table below for the list of sanctioned organisations and how this will affect you.

Yes. There are specific sanctions on shares and bonds of certain Russian parties. This has been the case since the annexation of Crimea, and these sanctions have recently been extended.

No, that is no longer possible. AMRO AMRO issues MAESTRO cards which are accepted at terminals of MAESTRO acceptance points. These acceptance points (shops, ATMs, etc.) are clients of a bank that is connected to the MasterCard network. MasterCard is the owner of the MAESTRO brand. Effective 5 March 2022, cards issued by Russian banks will no longer be supported by the Mastercard network and cards issued outside Russia will no longer work within the country. Thus, the ABN AMRO debit card will not work in Russia.

There is no ban on the use of cash (including Euros) already on hand in Russia. However, the EU has prohibited, subject to certain exceptions, the supply of euro-denominated banknotes to Russia or to any natural person or organisation in Russia, or for use in Russia. The prohibition does not apply where the banknotes are for the personal use of natural persons travelling to Russia. For more information, please refer to the EU Sanctions Regulation (Article 5).