Let's for a moment suppose that visa and mastercard go nuts.
They block all the card and money transfers.
What would be the short term consequences?
Lost money will be returned from insurance fund, then something interesting would happen.
A bank run?
Maybe, if significant part of deposits money was invested into the foreign assets.
A drop in e-commerce? enormous use of webmoney ?
This event will have a shocking effect to e-commerce, and some transitional period will be required before new PoS equipment will be established by sellers.
The only problem is international banking. National system will be incompatible with VISA or MC, so customers of sanctioned bank will be unable to work with foreign VISA/MC clients directly. But this shouldn't create any irresistible problem, because local banks are able to work with any payment system using the foreign pass-through, if it would be necessary.
enormous use of webmoney ?
I'd like to see that. But actually, webmoney is just another bank, it could be sanctioned as well as any others.
Bitcoin usage?
Unfortunately, bitcoin network wouldn't be able to process such amount of transactions.
Thanks for the detailed answer.
I just realized that a bank run shouldn't be triggered.
The money you have on your visa card are money owned by the bank in my case for example ING.
So it's just you card that got disabled , it's not your account that is at risk .. so I guess no bank run.
As for webmoney...didn't know they are actually a bank , not a service.
It's a pain in the ass sometimes to use but I had no problems with it in the last 4 years so people would consider it first , before bitcoin unfortunately.
