Twenty countries join Russia's analogue of SWIFT

Twenty countries have joined the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (known for Russian initials as SPFS) — a Russian analogue of SWIFT, first deputy chairman of the Central Bank, Vladimir Chistyukhin indicated in the presentation at International Exhibition and Forum "Russia”.

"System for Transfer of Financial Messages: 557 banks and companies, of which 159 are non-residents from 20 countries,” the presentation said.

In early December, the Central Bank of Russia said that the SPFS included 150 non-residents from 16 countries, while a year earlier there were just over 100 of them.

In 2014, when Western countries first threatened to disconnect Russia from SWIFT, Russia started looking for an alternative system that could be used instead. After the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia's largest banks were disconnected from SWIFT. The SPFS traffic has been showing growing traffic since then.

In early January, deputy head of the Central Bank of Iran, Mohsen Karimi, said that Moscow and Tehran had connected their financial messaging systems. The banks of the two countries "no longer need Switzerland” to communicate with each other, Karimi said.

SWIFT is an international interbank system for transmitting information and making payments. More than 11,000 largest organisations in almost all countries of the world are connected to SWIFT. Until a few years ago, it was the primary system to handle almost all banking transactions in the world.