The SWIFT payment system has been discredited; its place today is being overtaken by a system based on payments in national currencies, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the investment forum "Russia Calling!" taking place in Moscow.
"The financial infrastructure, which is based on the predominance of the dollar and the euro, and settlements conducted exclusively through Western banks and the SWIFT system, is also discredited. Today, its place is being successfully taken over by the system of settlements in national currencies," Putin said.
Earlier, in October 2023, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that BRICS finance ministers and heads of the nations' central banks are working on the establishment of the bloc's "payment instruments and platforms."
Experts believe that the monopoly of large Western banks will be undermined in the near future, Putin added.
"According to experts, in the coming years this will lead to a real revolution that will finally undermine the monopoly of large Western banks," he said.
The leader also noted that he expects to see radical changes in the global banking system due to the emergence of new technologies, including blockchain.
Putin emphasized that Russia stands for a truly democratic model of global economic development.
"We want to create a new model, one that is truly democratic and one where truly fair competition among all participants in economic activity prevails," the head of state underlined.
The president stressed that global economic relations are changing; the former model of globalization is being replaced by a multipolar model, noting that the financial system based on the US dollar and the euro is discredited.
According to the president, Russia has demonstrated that it is capable of responding to the most difficult challenges; its economy has shown a fundamental margin of safety. Proving his point, Putin noted that Russia's GDP has grown by 3.2% in 10 months, a percentage that is higher than the one before the Western sanctions, moreover, the country's GDP growth is expected to be at least 3.5% by the end of the year.
Stressing that Russia is ahead of all the leading countries of the European Union in terms of economic growth, the head of state concluded that it is profitable to work with Russia and in Russia now, and it will be profitable in the future.
As part of the sanctions against Russia imposed in 2022 in response to the Russian special operation in Ukraine, Russian banks were cut off from SWIFT. Russian financial institutions embraced the country's equivalent of the SWIFT financial transfer system, the SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages), created by the Central Bank of Russia in 2014.