OREANDA-NEWS. The number of transactions through the Russian analogue of SWIFT doubled in 2020 as the US and EU threats to disconnect the Russian Federation from international settlements grew. This is reported in the report of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.

Russia, due to threats of disconnection from the international financial settlement system SWIFT, created in 2014 its own analogue - the Bank of Russia Financial Messaging System (SPFS) for continuous international settlements at any time. Last year, 7 years after the first US and EU sanctions, European and US lawmakers increasingly threatened to shutdown. This led to a surge in payments through the Russian analogue of SWIFT.

"The number of messages transmitted via SPFS has doubled over the year and amounted to 20.6% of the internal Russian traffic in SWIFT," the RF Central Bank said.

In 2020, the threat of disconnecting the Russian Federation from SWIFT grew and the Central Bank of the Russian Federation simplified the connection of new users to the SPFS through the "service bureau". The Central Bank explained: "This scheme makes it possible to simplify and speed up the process of connecting both Russian and foreign legal entities, including credit organizations."

SPFS can be quickly connected to national counterparts in China and other trading partner countries of Russia.

SWIFT is an international interbank system for transferring information and making payments, created under Belgian law. SWIFT is headquartered in Belgium. More than 11 thousand of the largest organizations in 200 countries are connected to the system.