Ask HN: Given SPFS, would Russia care about SWIFT?

6 points

4 years ago

To understand the importance of SWIFT with regards to the Ukrainian-Russian war, I’m reading up on the system. In course of that I learned that Russia built SPFS [1], an alternative and compatible system, in 2014.

Could anyone comment on why cutting Russia(n banks) from SWIFT would matter, given they have SPFS anyway?

It is clear SPFS is far from being a completely compatible SWIFT alternative. But it still seems like Russia laid a reasonable groundwork for a “post-SWIFT era” and would not really care about what the media seems to consider the strongest possible sanction against it.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS

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