Rostec Group, a Russian government organization, has announced that they've developed a new blockchain platform to launch a digital system for international payments capable of replacing the global Swift system.
Russian banks were excluded from the SWIFT system last February thanks to sanctions imposed by Western countries in response to the Russian-Ukrainian war. Since then, Moscow has been trying to search for an alternative financial payment system to SWIFT in order to protect its foreign trade transactions. The digital system of international payments will allow Russia to pay for its imports in its national currency, the Ruble, instead of the dollar. According to the Rostec Group, the new system will also enable foreign countries to pay for their imports from Russia in their national currencies as well.
Blockchain platform CELLS enables new opportunities
Rostec’s statement said that the blockchain platform, called CELLS, was developed by the Novosibirsk Institute of Software Systems (NIPS), which is in turn affiliated with the Rostec Group. The platform is designed to be able to provide an integrated system based on distributed ledger technology (DLT). According to the Russian group, the platform includes among its central elements a digital system for making payments in the national currencies of the countries associated with it.
The company asserts that its new system should provide a real alternative to the international payment services provided by SWIFT from which Russian banks have been isolated under Western sanctions. In addition to the international payments service, the CELLS platform provides its users with the ability to create wallets for storing digital currencies.
Oleg Yevtushenko, CEO of the Rostec Group, pledged that the new international payment system will ensure high speed and secure transactions. The new digital system should be capable to perform about 100,000 transactions per second, with the possibility of doubling this number.
Russia: position on cryptocurrency has shifted
The announcement of the new system comes a few days after the Russian government said it was considering adopting cryptocurrencies in international payments. The Russian Central Bank had proposed last January to ban the introduction and use of all cryptocurrencies. There are discussions within the Russian government about the idea of using cryptocurrencies in international trade settlements, said Ivan Chepskov, head of the Financial Policy Department of the Russian Finance Ministry.
It is considered a shift in the Russian position on cryptocurrencies, as the Russian Central Bank had warned earlier this year of the risks to the country’s financial system. It was claimed that crypto undermines the sovereignty of the country’s monetary policy. In contrast, the legal status of cryptocurrencies in Russia remains in flux and previous efforts to legalize them have not yielded results. The government is pressing to allow them in order to attract foreign investment and get domestic trade out of the shadow of Western sanctions.
