Explained: The SWIFT payments system, and why Ukraine wants Russia banned from it

The European Union is being criticized for not cutting off Russia from the global payments system. But what exactly is SWIFT?

Banning Russia from SWIFT would hurt the European economy as well.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba didn't mince his words in calling out the European Union for dragging its feet on shutting Russia out of SWIFT. "Everyone who now doubts whether Russia should be banned from SWIFT has to understand that the blood of innocent Ukrainian men, women and children will be on their hands too," Kuleba wrote on Twitter. Many others, including several leaders from within the E.U., shared Kuleba's sentiment that Russia should be cut off from the international payments system in response to President Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine.

What is SWIFT?

SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a secure global messaging network that banks use to make cross-border payments. The network facilitates financial institutions to wire money to each other, helping ensure that global trade carries on smoothly. It is used by more than 11,000 financial institutions in over 200 countries and territories to send secure payment orders. Nearly 40 million messages with instructions to transfer trillions of dollars were sent each day in 2020 over the platform, making it the most important payment messaging network in the world, by far.

Because the messages sent over the platform are deemed secure, it helps banks honor the payment instructions swiftly. This ensures that financial institutions can handle high volumes of transactions every day. The Belgium-based society, founded in 1973, is overseen by central banks in Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan.

What would a ban mean for Russia?

Cutting off Russia from the network would cause a major disruption to its economy as it would severely restrict the country's access to global financial markets. The ban would make it difficult for Russian firms and individuals to pay for imported goods or receive payments for their exports, dealing a major blow to the country's crucial oil and gas sector, which relies heavily on SWIFT for the movement of funds. It would also restrict Russians' ability to invest or borrow overseas. The booting of Iranian banks from the network in 2012 was partly responsible for a dramatic drop in the country's oil exports.

Russian financial institutions could use other channels such as phones, messaging apps or email as alternatives and process payments via banks in countries that have not imposed sanctions. But these alternatives would not be as efficient and secure as SWIFT and could lead to higher costs and a fall in transaction volumes. Russia has developed its own payment messaging network, called SPFS. The system, which handles about a fifth of domestic payments, underwhelms when it comes to the scale and efficiency that SWIFT offers.

Why is the E.U. holding back?

The E.U. economy is more intertwined with Russia's than the U.S. economy is and stands to lose much more if Moscow were to be shut out of SWIFT. Data from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) shows that E.U. banks hold a major chunk of the nearly $30 billion (€27 billion) in foreign banks' exposure to Russia. The European Union is Russia's biggest trade partner. About 37 per cent of Russia's imports came from the E.U. in 2020 and nearly 38 per cent of its exports went to the E.U. The bloc relies heavily on Russia for its energy needs and gets more than a third of its gas supply and about a quarter of its oil from the country.

"[A SWIFT ban] is also going to be very bad for Europe because, if they can't pay for Russian gas, using correspondent banks that use dollars in the middle of the transaction of buying their oil and gas from Russia, it's going to create havoc on the gas markets and possibly result in having gas turned off in winter," Alexandra Vacroux, executive director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, told DW . Some E.U. leaders, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have justified their inaction on the SWIFT ban by suggesting that they were holding back some ammunition for later.

Is SWIFT bound by sanctions?

The society, a cooperative of banks, describes itself as politically neutral and has resisted calls to boot countries from the network. However, SWIFT, which is incorporated under Belgian law, is bound by Belgian and E.U. rules, which would include economic sanctions. Gottfried Leibbrandt, former head of SWIFT, told a Financial Times forum in 2021 that, although the network is technically independent, the United States enjoys effective sanction powers, as over 40 per cent of payment flows are in U.S. dollars. In the past, Washington has had countries banned from SWIFT, including as recently as 2018, when Iranian banks were banned after the U.S. withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal.

With inputs from Reuters news agency.