Russian financial institutions are prepared to survive without access to SWIFT (The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) – the global dollar-based interbank payments network – should the US and European Union follow through with threats to cut it off, according to Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich.

“Certainly, it is unpleasant, as it will prove a stumbling block for companies and banks, and will slow down work. It will be inevitable to deploy some aged technologies for information transfer and calculations. However, the companies are technically and psychologically ready for the shutdown as this threat was repeatedly voiced,” Dvorkovich said, according to TASS and RT, adding that such a dramatic step would negatively corporations doing business in the US and Europe.

“In general, disconnecting Russia from SWIFT would be a crazy step on the part of our Western partners. It is obvious that for the companies which work in Europe and the US it would be harmful. And this applies not only to the shutdown of the service,” he said.

The US and European Union have been periodically threatening to disconnect Russia from SWIFT since 2014 (over SWIFT’s own objections), when the conflict in Ukraine flared up and the two powers introduced the first round of international penalties against Moscow for its alleged involvement.

As a reminder, at the time, the MasterCard payment system stopped serving clients of seven Russian banks without warning after Washington imposed its first set of sanctions on Moscow in 2014. In response, the Russian government ordered the creation of a national payment system. With the support of the country’s banking system, the Mir charge card was introduced in 2015, although there is no data on what its adoption rate has been in the following years.

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