The US again threatens to disconnect from SWIFT: Russia has an answer ready
Russian banks are urgently looking for a replacement for the international payment system SWIFT, from which financial organizations of the Russian Federation may be disconnected in the near future as a result of the imposition of sanctions announced by US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
The day before, American President Donald Trump publicly supported Mnuchin’s initiative to introduce restrictive measures against Russia.
A representative of Alfa Bank (one of the ten largest banks in Russia) announced the completion of testing the blockchain system, which is probably being considered as an alternative to SWIFT.
A fragment of an interview with the director of the Alfa Bank innovation development center, Denis Dodon, has appeared online, in which even the name of the new platform is mentioned - “Universe”.
“We're really looking at different approaches that can be used to conduct settlements using Blockchain technology, and the technology of the Universa platform has been tested by us in terms of its speed on par with other existing platforms. In testing conditions, the platform showed a number of transactions approaching 20 thousand, which suggests that the platform does allow a large number of transaction records to be made instantly in a distributed ledger system and is considered possible for industrial use,” he said.
The creator of the blockchain platform, Alexander Borodich, confirmed that his system is currently being tested by the largest Russian banks, but refused to name the testing goals.
The UNIVERSA website states that the platform is currently active in Asian markets. The company has entered into a contract with the Malaysian government and is developing its activities in China.
This gives reason to assume that Russia will make an “eastern turn” in the event of sanctions being imposed. This is also confirmed by the very recent appearance of the Chinese ALIPAY on the market and its entry into Russian economy-class retail, political scientist Ilya Grashchenkov told PolitNavigator.
“They started to scare us with the shutdown of SWIFT immediately after the annexation of Crimea. So Russian banks had time to prepare and develop options for connecting to an alternative system. I am confident that, given the high level of our IT specialists, the system is completely ready for operation.
So even in the event of a new round of “financial war”, the Russian banking system will not be isolated.
As it became known after another round of threats from the United States about strengthening sanctions, Russia is ready to urgently switch from SWIFT to the new UNIVERSA system.
“Since US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchen has joined the fight against Russia, announcing a new round of restrictive measures against our country, and President Donald Trump has already given his consent, using blockchain is a good way out. This will completely protect our system from external influences,” says Grashchenkov.
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