Putin instructed russia's richest billionaire to create yet another "SWIFT analogue".

Problems with settlements with foreign partners due to sanctions are forcing the Z-regime to look for various ways to create payment systems. Another attempt to do this received the blessing of Putin himself.

As part of the merger of the Wildberries marketplace and russia's largest outdoor advertising operator Russ, it is planned to create not only a "high-tech digital trading platform", as the companies themselves reported, but also a payment platform. It could replace the SWIFT international bank payment system, two sources close to the Kremlin told proposedly to Bloomberg in order to get the news circulating in Western media. Russian banks lost access to SWIFT after Putin unleashed the war in Ukraine.

The founder and head of Wildberries, Tatyana Bakalchuk, is the richest woman in Russia. Her fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is $8.1 billion, which has increased by 40% since the beginning of the war in Ukraine thanks to the growth of the Wildberries business, in which she owns 99%.

Bakalchuk is not under Western sanctions, but the creation of a payment system increases the risk that she may fall under them. Earlier, sanctions were imposed against the Mir payment system and its operator NSPK.

The G7 countries and the EU are discussing restrictions against banks that use the russian analogue of SWIFT - the Financial Messaging System of the Bank of russia (SPFS). Foreign banks in 20 countries, including China, Belarus, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan, are connected to it.
According to Western officials, the SPFS is used to circumvent sanctions and purchase products prohibited for supply to russia.

The 14th package of sanctions, which the EU unveiled on June 20, prohibits European companies operating outside russia from connecting to the SPFS, as well as conducting transactions with blacklisted companies that use this system to circumvent sanctions.