On 28/02/2024, in light of recent news about major Chinese banks refusing to cooperate with Russian clients and correspondent banks, Alexander Linnikov participated in a discussion on the problem of cross-border payments in a live broadcast of the “DAY” program on the RBC channel.
Alexander Linnikov explained that the difficulties with using “MIR” cards outside of Russia are caused more by unofficial political pressure from USA financial authorities on foreign banks than by directly new sanctions.
“Private clients, individuals, are hostages of the overall situation. The solution to the problem is the implementation of alternative payment systems. It is proposed to carry out settlements outside the perimeter of the USA or EU payment system, without using dollars or euros, both in the interbank settlement sphere and in the private payment sphere. It is necessary to switch to bilateral or multilateral systems that will not cover so-called ‘unfriendly’ states and will not make information about the settlements available to the USA and EU financial authorities,” says Alexander Linnikov.
The founder of L&P also mentioned work on creating an analog of SWIFT for settlements in rubles and other currencies, as well as the possible use of the Russian system as a basis for a new international infrastructure.
