Russia ready with own alternative to international bank transfer system .
Global oil giant Rosneft has prepared itself for shutdown of SWIFT interbank cash transfer services, should Russia be shut out of the system as part of Western sanctions.
A Russian equivalent of SWIFT was tested by Rosneft in December, Gazprombank Vice-President Andrey Korolyov told TASS news agency. It is the first time that the Russian SWIFT analogue has been used by a huge corporation since its introduction in 2014.
Gazprombank is Russia’s third-largest bank. Both Rosneft and the bank have been the subjects of US sanctions.
The potential exclusion of Russia from SWIFT has worried the country’s banks since 2014, when the EU and the US introduced the first round of international sanctions against Moscow over alleged involvement in the Ukraine crisis and the reunification with Crimea. However, SWIFT itself has fended off such talks.
Interesting.
But the question is, how many banks in other countries will support it, given that SWIFT has been around for such a long time, and is as such supported by most banks?
Just wondering whether companies that interface with the system (let’s say Monzo or other challengers want to allow payments to accounts on this Russian SWIFT-like network) would also be in breach of sanctions. If so there wouldn’t be any easy legal way of transferring money in/out of this network as all the companies we’re familiar with would be prohibited from interacting with it.
In any case it’s nice to see a SWIFT alternative as presumably since it’s been designed recently it isn’t subject to the same legacy constraints the SWIFT network was build to accomodate back in the days.
The original source was TASS news agency in Russia (http://tass.ru/ekonomika) who spoke to VP Andrey Korolyov of Gazprombank (http://www.gazprombank.ru/) about Rosneft’s work (https://www.rosneft.ru/) but not sure if it on their online portal, maybe their office can provide a copy or link.
TASS would be my first point of call to try and get an English source, if not then maybe Rosneft can help provide one.