Moscow, January 16 – The number of countries joining the Bank of Russia’s Financial Messaging System (SPFS), an alternative to SWIFT, has now reached over 20, according to a presentation by the First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank, Vladimir Chistyukhin, at the international exhibition-forum “Russia”. The materials state that the system currently includes 557 banks and companies, with 159 non-residents from 20 countries. In early December, the Central Bank announced that the SPFS had 150 non-residents from 16 countries, compared to just over 100 the previous year. In 2014, when Western countries first threatened to disconnect Russia from SWIFT, alternatives, including the SPFS, began to be created. After the start of the military special operation in Ukraine, the largest Russian banks were disconnected from SWIFT, leading to a continuous growth in SPFS traffic. Earlier this January, the Deputy Head of the Central Bank of Iran, Mohsen Karimi, announced that Moscow and Tehran had connected their financial messaging systems, eliminating the need for Switzerland as an intermediary for banking communication between the two countries.
