RIA Novosti: Interface of the system that can replace SWIFT presented in Russia
The Distributed Ledger Technologies Centre at St Petersburg University has developed a decentralised interbank messaging system (DCMS) and presented its working interface.
The University’s press service reported that the system, which will completely replace the previously used global financial messaging system SWIFT, is already ready for use and has been tested in a dozen organisations.
According to Dmitrii Shishmakov, Director of the Centre, DCMS is a full-fledged and very flexible tool for transmitting financial messages. According to him, the decentralised interbank messaging system is based on blockchain technology and does not have a single operator that can forcibly disconnect a participant or change data in any way.
‘In other words, the system simply does not have a single centre and «control panel». All users also have access to the necessary information and can exchange banking messages without the restrictions that SWIFT has,’ Dmitrii Shishmakov explained, adding that the system has already been created and is ready for use.
The University reminded that the implementation of the DCMS project started at St Petersburg University in April last year, and its prototype was ready by the end of July. During the year, the project was tested by more than 10 organisations.
The components of the system are currently used in the Platform for Information and Analytical Interaction for Cross-Border Settlements that are being developed by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.
According to Andrey Lisitsyn, Managing Director of the Financial Policy and Financial Markets Department of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, the DCMS has ‘an important feature, i.e. the ability to create a confidential and secure circuit of interaction not only among financial institutions, but also among industrial enterprises and groups of companies’.
Earlier, during the Financial Congress of the Bank of Russia, VTB head Andrey Kostin presented the Global South system, in which he proposed creating a settlement system that would bypass SWIFT and Western financial institutions.