Mohsen Karimi, deputy governor of the Central Bank of Iran for International Affairs, said Thursday that the country no longer needs to use the SWIFT messaging system for bank transfers and added that all Russian banks and more than a hundred entities in other countries have been connected to the Iranian financial telecommunications system, known as SEPAM.
Karimi said in statements to Iran’s Tasnim news agency that Tehran no longer needs to use the SWIFT system for financial transactions and detailed that Russian banks, their branches in other countries with access to SPFS — the Russian equivalent of SWIFT — and 106 other non-Russian banks in thirteen countries have already been connected to SEPAM.
In this regard, he explained that since the SPFS has been linked to SEPAM, anyone with access to the Russian network can now connect to Iranian banks and vice versa, while stressing that messages between the two systems are sent in line with SWIFT’s own standards.
Russia’s trade representative in Iran, Rustam Zhiganshin, unveiled plans in October 2022 to launch an interbank information system analogous to SWIFT, amid strengthening bilateral ties and in the face of the battery of sanctions imposed by the international community against both countries.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
