Integration of national payment systems doesn’t boil down to a mere unification of the bank payment card systems, claimed Sergey Dubkov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus.

Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan are discussing possible creation of their own counterpart of the international interbank information exchange system SWIFT, said Sergey Dubkov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus.

"Belarus uses SWIFT system, and so do Russia and Kazakhstan. However, that doesn’t mean that we should have no other channels of interaction that would be under our control and would be convenient from the viewpoint of the integrity of the payment information", — he said to the state agency Belta.

He added that Central Banks of the three countries are also working on integration of the national payment systems, "in order to make upcoming Russian and Kazakhstan national payment systems and BELKART (Belarus national payment system – editor’s note) interact and to make this service accessible to both citizens and enterprises", — said Dubkov.

According to him, integration of national payment systems doesn’t come down to a mere unification of the bank payment card systems. It is also necessary to organize interbank interaction, in other words, to set up a counterpart of the international system of transfer of information and payments SWIFT, emphasized Dubkov.

"It is not done against anybody. We are not against Visa or MasterCard”, - he pointed out, reminding how crucial it is for a consumer to have a choice.

SWIFT processes over $6 trillion worth of payments and binds together over 10 thousand financial organizations in 210 countries. Under SWIFT By-Laws each country organizes SWIFT National Member Group and SWIFT National User Group uniting all SWIFT users. Such a group in Russia is called Rosswift (Russian National SWIFT Association).

Source: RIA News