The Russian authorities proposed to couple the Russian analogue of SWIFT, the Central Bank’s Financial Message Transfer System, with national platforms for payments in “friendly” countries. In the first stage, it will be launched with contractors in one of the countries, Vedomosti learned.
On November 1, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishutin, at a meeting of the heads of government of the SCO countries (India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) proposed to create their own system of interbank payments and electronic exchange of financial information.
The head of government believes that this will help get rid of the influence of third countries in the financial sector, and national interbank telecommunication platforms can be used for cross-border payments.
He also added that the coupling of national settlement systems will simplify the use of the platform for the banks of the partner countries, since the work will be carried out on the basis of the national payment infrastructure.
Bringing the proposal to life will require financial and technological investments. Coupling of settlement systems occurs with the help of network gateways – they re-encode payment messages from one format to another. The interlocutor of the publication said that the idea is now in its early stages and that “it is not easy.” According to him, the task is not to create an alternative to SWIFT, but to create a system that allows working in national currencies.
Experts do not see any particular difficulties in the integration of national interbank exchange systems, if they were created in accordance with international standards.
Russia’s disconnection from SWIFT has been considered by the US and the EU since 2014. Once again, this topic has become relevant in the context of rising tensions in Donbass. It was reported that the disconnection of SWIFT could become one of the options for the harsh sanctions of Western countries against the Russian Federation.
Swiss PostFinance, Estonian LHV Pank, French Banque Populaire, Finnish S-BANK stopped accepting SWIFT transfers from Russian banks in October 2022. Financial institutions began to block payments on their own initiative in the context of stricter EU requirements for additional checks on funds from Russia.
Author:
karina pardaeva
Source: RB
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