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8 foreign entities join Russia's proprietary payment network SPFS

Eight foreign banks have connected to Russia's proprietary payment system, with three of the entities fully operational on the network and the remaining five currently making the requisite technical preparations, Sputnik News reported Oct. 2, citing director of the Russian Central Bank's payment system, Alla Bakina.

According to Bakina, the member banks were from the Eurasian Economic Union — the bloc created in 2014 and comprised of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the report said.

The System for the Transfer of Financial Messages, or Russian acronym SPFS, was created by Russia after Western countries threatened to remove Russia from the SWIFT payment system operated by Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication SCRL. SPFS went live in 2017.

Bakina said the network's traffic over the past 12 months had grown to 15% of that of SWIFT inside Russia, up from 10% to 11% in 2018. Meanwhile, Russia and Iran are looking to connect the SPFS with SEPAM, a Persian acronym for Iran's proprietary financial messaging system, according to the report.

Bakina added that the Russian central bank is creating opportunities to add new members to the platform via "service bureaus," which are special entities created from organizations that are already members of the network, with the latter acting as a hub, Sputnik News reported.