Nabiullina: banks from several countries want into 'Russia’s SWIFT'

Banks of several countries plan to become members of the Russian analogue of the SWIFT interbank messaging system, and some of them have already carried out pilot connections, Central Bank chairwoman Elvira Nabiullina said.

"We are constantly hearing the threats that this or that country, including Russia, may be cut off from SWIFT, so, our obvious reaction was to develop our own system. We started active development after 2014, and we created a system for exchange of financial messages,” she told the conference.

It uses the same standards as SWIFT, so a bank doesn’t have to change its internal systems completely. Not only banks can join it, but large companies as well. Currently, about 18% of Russian financial massages are going through the system, she added.

"It is open for external connections, and we are improving it for our trade partners if they want to join it. This work is already going on, and banks of several countries plant to join it. We’ve already had some test connections. We think that it will develop further," Prime news agency cited Nabiullina as saying.