MOSCOW, March 27 (Reuters) - Samsung Pay, a payment

service owned by South Korea's Samsung Electronics ( SSNLF ),

will stop working with Russia's national Mir payment cards from

April 3, the two payment systems said on Wednesday.

Payment cards issued by Mir have become more important since

its U.S. rivals suspended operations in Russia after the

invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and their payment cards

which were issued in the country stopped working abroad.

In February U.S. authorities imposed additional sweeping

sanctions against Russia, including on its National Payment Card

System (NSPK), which operates Mir cards.

"Starting April 3, 2024, adding and using Mir cards in

Samsung Pay will not be available," Samsung Pay said in a

statement on its website.

"At the same time, the functionality of adding and using

club cards/loyalty cards in the Samsung Pay app will work

unchanged."

Samsung Pay said its services would continue to operate in

Belarus, which has also come under heavy Western sanctions.

The NSPK confirmed that the use of Mir cards in the Samsung

Pay application would be suspended from April 3.

"The mobile payment service pre-installed on Samsung

smartphones is suspending its partnership with the Mir payment

system," the NSPK said, adding that the Mir Pay application can

still be downloaded from the RuStore, a Russian app for Android

users, and the Android App Gallery.

Reuters verified that the Mir Pay app was not available on

the Apple Store and Google Pay.

"In an attempt to complicate the lives of Russians, the

Americans have synchronised with the Koreans," Anton Gorelkin,

deputy head of the Russian parliament's committee on information

policy, wrote on the Telegram app on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya; Writing by Lucy Papachristou

Editing by Ros Russell)