MOSCOW (Dispatches) -
Russia’s domestic credit and debit payment system Mir will soon be integrated with its Iranian analogue Shetab in order to facilitate mutual transactions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
“On the integration and mutual use of the Russian Mir and Iranian Shetab systems, substantive talks are being held at the level of central banks. They communicated in July and agreed on a kind of a road map that will lead us to this result. I am sure that this will take place relatively soon,” Lavrov said at a press conference following talks with his Iranian counterpart, Hussein Amir-Abdollahian.
Amir-Abdollahian also expressed hope that the last technical problems for the integration would be resolved in the nearest future.
Earlier, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Diplomacy Mehdi Safari said that the availability of the necessary technical infrastructure allows Iran to connect to the Mir system within a few months. Meanwhile, Qorban Eskandari, the general director of the Iranian Economy Ministry’s Department of Banking and Insurance Affairs noted that Iran could use Mir for financial transactions with Russia at the early stages of cooperation, and then expand its use to settlements with other international partners.
Iran and Russia have been boosting their economic ties since February when Russia came under a series of Western sanctions because of the war in Ukraine.
The two countries have since then introduced a currency pairing system to facilitate banking transactions and trade payments.