Iran and Russia have coordinated their inter-bank transactions to avoid using the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) global network and replace it with national financial messaging systems, Governor of the Iranian Central Bank (CBI) Abdolnaser Hemmati said on Tuesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th September, 2019) Iran and Russia have coordinated their inter-bank transactions to avoid using the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) global network and replace it with national financial messaging systems, Governor of the Iranian Central Bank (CBI) Abdolnaser Hemmati said on Tuesday.On September 13, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov said that Tehran and Moscow were developing an alternative to SWIFT in order to protect their transactions against sanctions imposed by third countries.
Hemmati announced that SWIFT-free banking ties had been established between the two states, which would now use their own national financial messaging systems, Russia's SPFS and Iran's SEPAM.
The SWIFT global financial messaging system comprises over 11,000 financial institutions from more than 200 countries and territories. Back in 2014, the company admitted to being under pressure from several countries to join the sanctions on Russia, but stressed that it had rejected to do so. The Central Bank of Russia, nevertheless, has established its own alternative to SWIFT the SPFS channel in order to ensure the security of its transactions.
For Iran, risks are linked to the economic and financial sanctions imposed by the United States upon its withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal in May 2018, to which Tehran responded a year later by pledging to gradually abandon its own commitments under the deal.
