Soon, Soviet Shoppers Will Be Master Chargers

The first VISA and MasterCard credit cards ever issued by Soviet banks have gone to the head of the Soviet Union’s National Olympic Committee and a Moscow banking executive.

The first VISA card, called “SovCard,” was issued Friday to Yuri Titov by VAO Intourist in Moscow, which is responsible in the Soviet Union for foreign travel, said Dan Brigham, a spokesman for Visa International in San Francisco.

Titov said in a prepared statement released by VISA that he has declared VISA the “official credit card” of the 1988 Soviet Olympic team.

An Intourist spokesman predicted that SovCards soon will be available to the general public in the Soviet Union.

On Saturday, MasterCard International issued a Eurocard-MasterCard in Moscow to Yu S. Moskovsky, chairman of the Soviet Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs, known as Vnesheconombank, said MasterCard spokesman Howard Pulchin in New York.

A 75-second MasterCard commercial is scheduled to air today during the popular Soviet news program “Vremya,” Pulchin said. The so-called Gold Card eventually will be widely available in the Soviet Union, he said.

The credit limits of the cards and other policies governing their use were not immediately available.

The government agency Intourist joined VISA as a card-issuing member in January. It issued the card through Sberegatelnybank, a Soviet bank with sole responsibility for consumer banking, Brigham said.

Mikhail Misko, director of Intourist’s credit card program, said in the statement that he is working with Okobank, the Finnish cooperative bank, to “establish the systems necessary for our VISA card to be accepted worldwide.”