TEHRAN, Iran, July 16
Trend:
Iran is looking to integrate the country into Russia's Mir payment system, Director General of Europe and America at Trade Promotion Organization of Iran Behrouz Olfat told Trend.
"Integration of Iran's Interbank Information Transfer Network known as 'Shetab' into the Russian payment system called 'Mir' (World), has been brought up by the two countries three years ago," he said.
"There have been some technical discussions, but no results have been reached so far," Olfat said.
"The Central Bank of Iran and other commercial banks are looking to get integrate 'Shetab' into 'Mir', the protocols related to this issue are being reviewed. If it works, the bank cards of Iran would be connected to 'Mir', and his would help facilitate financial transactions, especially in tourism sector," said the official.
He went on to add that SPFS (Russian equivalent of the SWIFT financial transfer system, developed by the Central Bank of Russia) is based on ruble, and has no connection to the western financial network, so the CIS countries, and even China are using this system, so the Central Bank of Iran is also looking to connect to it.
SPFS was developed after the US government threatened to disconnect Russia from the SWIFT system.
"The transactions with national currencies between Iran and Russia have always been discussed, but due to fluctuation in foreign currency rate, there are some issues that need to be fleshed out in details. Iran is trading with ruble via Mir Business Bank in Moscow and Astrakhan," he said.
'Mir' was established by the Central Bank of Russia. It is currently accepted mostly by Russia-based companies, though it is gradually becoming popular among foreign companies with Russian operations.The system is operated by the Russian National Card Payment System.
The system was devised in 2016 as a way to overcome potential blocks of electronic payments, after several Russian banks were denied services by US-based Visa and MasterCard.
The first cards working on the Mir system were launched in December 2015. Sberbank, Russia's leading bank, started issuing them in October 2016. Nearly 70 million 'Mir' cards have been issued by November 2019.