Re:A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
by abhishekjha on Friday February 25, 2022 @12:16PM
(#30469564)
India has UPI and Rupay which is getting adopted by other SEA countries. Nepal is as another addition.
Re:A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
by actuator on Friday February 25, 2022 @12:26PM
(#30469686)
I might be wrong but both of them aren't an equivalent to Swift. Rupay seems to be a card network like Visa and UPI builts on top of IMPS which might be considered an alternative, however IMPS is limited to financial institutions of one country and one currency.
The replacement is already functional.
In fact, Russia is not the only one having built a replacement to protect against the risk that SWIFT would be sanctioned: Europe has done it too with Instex: https://instex-europe.com/about-us/
SWIFT is a private company; those sanctions make it less competitive, and it is hard to play whack-a-mole with a worldwide market.
SWIFT, to be fair, is very convenient because of its standards and high connectivity. But if SWIFT was sanctioned today, banks can use literally any mechanism to route funds, from SPFS to email. What matters is the recursive existence of accounts held at banks that have accounts held at banks.