Russia and Iran continue to work on the integration of Russia's Mir payment system with Iran's Shetab through specialized agencies, Director of the Economic Cooperation Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry Dmitry Birichevsky told RIA Novosti.
"Russia prioritizes financial and banking cooperation with Iran, given our common focus on ensuring the sustainability of the bilateral payment and settlement infrastructure, independent of intermediaries from third countries. Work on the creation of a sustainable payment and settlement infrastructure is continuing through relevant agencies," he said in an interview with the agency.
In May 2022 Iran and Russia, having agreed to switch to mutual settlements in national currencies, discussed the connection of their payment systems - Mir and Shetab. At the end of January, representatives of the Central Banks of the two countries signed an agreement to work on simplifying financial and banking operations. According to Head of the Iranian Central Bank Mohammad Reza Farzin, the Central Bank financial messaging system merged with SEPAM (System for Electronic Payments Messaging) of the Central Bank of Iran.
The need to unite the payment systems of the two countries emerged back in 2018, when Iran was disconnected from the SWIFT international transfer system. And in June 2022, due to the situation in Ukraine, a number of Russian banks, such as Sberbank and VTB, were also disconnected from SWIFT.
GSV "Russia - Islamic world"
Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry
Based on materials from RIA Novosti