In recent weeks, European sanctions have forced Russian banks to disconnect from the SWIFT system.
Thus, the last package of sanctions was sent from the SWIFT system of Sberbank, Moscow Credit Bank and Rosselkhozbank since June 14. And from June 16, Tinkoff introduced new conditions for SWIFT transfers: the minimum transfer amount is $20,000, the commission is 3% of the transfer amount, but not less than 200 USD. e. and no more than the amount of transfers.
We understand what SWIFT is and how it works.
What is SWIFT
Try to figure out what kind of system it is.
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) – an international system for the transmission of financial messages between banks. For example, through its banks send orders to transfer money.
Only payment documents pass through SWIFT, not money. It ensures the security and reliability of the transmission of messages between government organizations.
If the original words, then this system is similar to e-mail correspondence. Only banks here communicate by contacts, sending important information about transfers.
What information is stored in SWIFT transfers
The transfer in the procedure performed on the basis of the instruction contains the following information: SWIFT code of the beneficiary bank (unique identifier of the system), name of the beneficiary bank and details of its branch where the money should be received, beneficiary’s account number in the global IBAN format, name of the final beneficiary ( full name of the person or the name of the organization) and the number of his bank account, as well as the details of the intermediary bank.
IBAN is the international beneficiary bank code. It encodes important banking information:
• first two letters: country code
• Two possibilities: a check number to check the validity of the account and protect information from errors during data transmission.
• four possible: the first four characters of food products BIC (bank identification number)
Who uses SWIFT
introduction of 248 banks from 19 countries into the SWIFT login system, currently it includes more than 10 thousand financial institutions from more than 200 countries. SWIFT transfers, in particular, received:
• individual
• private companies
• brokers
• trading exchanges
How SWIFT works
The financial institution creates a message based on interests. It is sent to the confidential SWIFT network through the terminal.
The terminal communicates with the computer to send and receive messages. After that, the information is sent to the operations center. The counterparty receives the document, decrypts it and corrects it. After that, it evaluates the error: messages are either transmitted to the recipients, or returned to the senders if there are errors. Banks charge a fee for each message sent.
If you really explain it, it looks like this:
one. Pavel informs the public bank in the order that he wants to make a transfer. The amount over time from the bank account of Ivan and bank A credits it to the correspondent account of the recipient bank B
2. Bank A sends an encrypted message to Bank B via SWIFT stating that $1,000 has been credited to its correspondent account. At the same time, a note follows that the money should go to Alexey’s account
3. Bank In the message. From it, he receives all the details and sends this money to the recipient. If the message is composed with errors, for example, the name of the payee is indicated with a typo (Aleksey instead of Aleksey), the message is sent to the sender’s bank for revision
four. After making sure that the data income is correct, the bank transfers $ 1000 from its correspondent account to Alexey’s personal account
approx. a correspondent account is an account of bank A opened with bank B. For example, Sberbank in Bank of America
Money can be transferred both with the opening of the lid in banks, and without. However, the first option is probability for frequent transfers as it is faster and cheaper.
How SWIFT works in Russia
Currencies transferred via SWIFT are destroyed from the bank. In Russia, the transaction fee is paid by sender.
Fees vary from 1% to 1.5% for dollar services depending on the financial institution. The minimum transfer time is one day, the maximum is a week.
SWIFT participants are divided into two zones: European and transatlantic. Banks of the latter are serviced in the USA. The European Messaging Area receives services in the Netherlands. This makes it easier to parse outgoing messages and not send messages about communication channels.
If the bank is located in neutral territory, then it independently decides in which service the service is located.
If Russia is off SWIFT, then what?
As we have previously held, it will not affect operations within the country in any way..
In 2014, Russia’s share of its Financial Message Transmission System (SPFS). It allows you to exchange documents between banks for transactions. In case of deviation from SWIFT, Russian banks switch to SPFS. For domestic customers, there will be no difference.
As Vedomosti notes, with a complete disconnection from SWIFT, a public bank may look for workarounds. For example, there is an alternative – the use of a bridge jar (third party). This is more complicated and takes more time to complete the payment.
The sanctions bank only works with banks in technical countries that are not reliable, and only if the sanctions will not apply to third-party banks doing business with Russia.
As Ekaterina Orlova, head of legal practice at CM Grace Consulting, said, with the total disconnection of all Russian banks from SWIFT, this is “not a paralysis of the banking system, but serious requirements for it.” One way or another, it may be further, but already harder than before.
Source: Iphones RU
