“If SWIFT is removed, then a lot of things will have to change.
The banking system will not collapse, but the entire system of relations between banks will have to be changed, which in itself is expensive and inconvenient, ”the expert said.
He recalled that the SWIFT system is inherently a payment notification system.
Alerts are paid, and Russia "occupies a very prominent place in the so-called traffic, in the flow of messages," the specialist says.
“If Russia is somehow turned off, purely hypothetically, then the banking system, primarily the Western European one, and the financial market will be dealt a really big blow,” the source explained to RT.
According to him, SWIFT serves not so much foreign trade commodity operations for payment between clients, but operations in the financial market, purchase and sale of securities, capital movements, and so on.
Disconnecting Russia from the system is fraught with the "incapacity" of SWIFT, which, in turn, can lead to catastrophic losses for companies in the financial market, the economist stressed.
Earlier, Friedrich Merz warned that restricting Russia's access to the SWIFT system could be compared to an "atomic bomb explosion" in the market for capital, goods and services.
According to him, SWIFT "is better not to touch."