صراط عشق صراط عشق
Iranian Ambassador to Moscow Kazem Jalali said that Tehran and Moscow are in talks on studying the possibility of using the MIR payment system.
MIR is a Russian payment system for electronic fund transfers established by the Central Bank of Russia under a law adopted on May 1 2017.
“The issue is on the agenda of talks and we are discussing it with our Russian colleagues,” Jalali said in a press conference on Thursday.
He further noted that Russia and Iran are also working to unify financial messaging systems that bypass the SWIFT interbank payment system.
“We are making efforts in this direction (connecting Iranian banks to the Financial Message Transfer System (SPFS) of the Bank of Russia) in order to hold good events in this area in the future,” Jalali said.
MIR enables both sides to skirt SWIFT.
MIR was actually created in 2014 following the Western sanctions on Russian financial institutions in the wake of the crisis in eastern Ukraine.
Reports say more than 50 percent of Russians have at least one MIR card. Over 25 percent of financial transactions are also done using the system.
The Russian banks and financial institutions have been effectively cut off from international systems as a result of western sanctions. Russia is now facing the highest number of Western sanctions in the world.
The Western governments, including the US, have imposed hundreds of sanctions on Russian institutions and companies over Russia’s war against Ukraine.
