Russia and Iran will unite their national payment systems

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Russia, and Iran will unite their national payment systems, which will operate on the territory of both countries, and will also switch to national currencies in mutual settlements as much as possible.

The countries are discussing the connection of the Mir and Shetab (Iran’s payment system) payment systems, as well as the work of national systems for transmitting financial messages, the co-chairman of the intergovernmental commission of Russia and Iran, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said.

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“One of the key topics (of the talks) was to create conditions for mutual settlements and the passage of payments between our legal entities, and organizations. It is important that we have agreed to switch as much as possible to settlements in national currencies. Together with the central banks, we have discussed the distribution and operation of the financial messaging system, as well as the connection of payment cards Mir and Shetab,” he said after the meeting of co-chairmen of the Intergovernmental Commission.

Currently, the Mir card does not work in Iran. It was reported that Iran and Russia are discussing the issue of connecting their banks to the Financial Message Transfer System (FTS), the Russian equivalent of the SWIFT system of international settlements.

The international payment systems Visa and Mastercard stopped working in Russia on March 10. All cards issued by Russian banks continued to operate in the country as usual until their expiration date.

However, cross-border transactions using Visa and Mastercard cards became unavailable; this applies both to payments for purchases in foreign online stores and to the use of these cards abroad.

Given the influence of Iran in the Shiite world, this opens up additional opportunities for the spread of the Russian payment system.