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It has emerged that Visa asked banks issuing its cards not to process any purchases from 1 September 2006.

'The action Visa has taken is in line with legislation passed in Russia and with basic international copyright and intellectual property norms,' said Simon Barker, a spokesman for the company.

MasterCard spokesman Chris Harrall said that it stopped payments in August.

'MasterCard does not tolerate

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the use of its network for illegal activity,' he said.

A US spokesman for Mediaservices, which operates Allofmp3, said that it was aware of Visa's position, but not of any other company blacklisting the site.

Mediaservices' director general Vadim Mamotin made no mention of the boycott during an online press conference this week, when he defended Allofmp3 against charges that it was selling music without licenses, failing to pay royalties and jeopardising Russian membership of the World Trade Organization.

The site was last reported to be rejecting all credit card purchases and advising potential customers to use Mediaservices' desktop music store, the iTunes-like allTunes, which states that Visa and MasterCard payments are accepted.