OREANDA-NEWS Sberbank has begun creating an international settlement system alternative to SWIFT and plans to complete its configuration within a year. This was stated by the head of Sberbank German Gref in an interview with the Russia 24 TV channel at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

"As for international payments, we are now in the process of building a new payment infrastructure, an alternative to SWIFT. I think that within the next year we will create a fairly effective system that will fully compensate for the SWIFT payment system", he said.

According to the head of Sberbank, the disconnection from SWIFT did not affect the bank's work in any way, because at the time of the disconnection, no more than 5% of all transactions were going through the SWIFT system. He also recalled that Russia has the SPFS and the internal Sberbank FinLine system that are used for work within the Russian Federation. Almost all major Russian institutions and clients are connected to these systems.

From March 12, 2022, the European Union started banning the provision of financial messaging services to Russian banks that fell under sanctions. SWIFT then confirmed that it would disconnect these credit institutions from the system.