The United States' decades-long campaign of economic warfare against Iran—characterized by extraterritorial sanctions, SWIFT exclusion, and the weaponization of dollar dominance—has produced an outcome that Washington neither anticipated nor desired. Rather than isolating Tehran, these measures have become the single greatest catalyst for the construction of alternative financial infrastructure now competing with SWIFT, Visa, Mastercard, and the correspondent banking system. From Russia's SPFS messaging network to China's CIPS clearing system, from the mBridge multi-CBDC platform to pan-African settlement rails, a parallel architecture is emerging that promises to restore national sovereignty over monetary policy, reduce the rents extracted by Western intermediaries, and enable bilateral and regional trade outside Washington's jurisdiction. This article examines the current state and potential of these systems, the billions in savings they offer participants, and the specific elements that are transforming them from emergency workarounds into genuinely reliable and attractive alternatives.
I. The Sanctions Paradox: When Weaponization Begets Diversification
The logic of U.S. sanctions against Iran has always rested on a simple premise: control the plumbing of global finance, and you control the behavior of nations. By threatening to sever access to SWIFT, freezing dollar-denominated assets, and imposing secondary sanctions on foreign banks, Washington sought to make compliance with American foreign policy the price of participation in the global economy.
But this strategy contains a fatal paradox, one that economists and historians are now documenting in real time. Washington cannot both weaponize the dollar system and maintain universal trust in it. These two objectives are in direct conflict. The erosion is slow—percentage points per decade rather than per year. But it compounds.
Iran has been the laboratory for this paradox. Cut off from correspondent banking, excluded from SWIFT, and denied access to Visa and Mastercard networks, Tehran was forced to build or adopt alternative rails. The result was not capitulation, but innovation. Iran linked its SEPAM interbank messaging system to Russia's SPFS, integrated its Shetab card network with Russia's Mir system, and became an early adopter of yuan-denominated trade settlement. Each tanker forced to pay in yuan, rupees, or rials—or to reroute at higher expense—chips away at the petrodollar architecture.
The significance extends far beyond Iran. Every nation watching Tehran's experience has drawn the same conclusion: over-reliance on U.S.-dominated financial infrastructure is a strategic vulnerability. The current de-dollarization push is different from anything in the past 80 years of dollar dominance precisely because these are not the actions of enemies—they are the actions of allies and partners who have watched the United States weaponize the dollar-based financial system, and have quietly concluded they need to reduce their exposure to it.
II. The Hidden Tax: How Western Financial Infrastructure Siphons Wealth
To understand the appeal of alternatives, one must first understand the cost of the status quo. The traditional cross-border payment system—built on SWIFT messaging, correspondent banking chains, and card networks dominated by Visa and Mastercard—functions as a sophisticated rent-extraction mechanism.
A typical SWIFT transfer costs $15–$50 in sending bank fees, plus $10–$30 per intermediary correspondent bank, plus $5–$20 in receiving bank fees, plus a foreign exchange markup of 0.5–3% above interbank rates. Settlement takes three to five days, during which capital is trapped in transit and subject to counterparty risk. For low-value remittances, the World Bank estimates the average cost of sending money across borders at 6.26%—a punitive levy on migrant workers sending earnings home.
For developing countries, the burden is structural. African companies historically used correspondent banks—often outside Africa—to settle payments between two African currencies in a third currency, usually dollars or euros. This created foreign exchange and liquidity requirements for individual central banks, while Western intermediaries captured fees at every hop. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) estimates that this correspondent banking dependency costs African businesses $5 billion annually in transaction costs alone.
The card network duopoly adds another layer. Visa and Mastercard together control the vast majority of global card purchase transactions, with interchange fees, scheme fees, and FX spreads embedded in every cross-border purchase. For nations with currencies outside the dollar-euro axis, this represents a persistent drain of national wealth into Western financial institutions.
III. The Architecture of Alternatives: A Survey of the New Financial Infrastructure
The alternative systems emerging in response to sanctions pressure can be grouped into four functional categories: wholesale messaging and clearing, central bank digital currency platforms, national and regional card networks, and integrated payment ecosystems.
A. Wholesale Messaging and Clearing: SPFS and CIPS
SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) was created by Russia's Central Bank in 2014, following the annexation of Crimea and Western threats to disconnect Russia from SWIFT. It allows participating banks to exchange standardized payment instructions using formats broadly compatible with SWIFT's MT messages. After the 2022 Ukraine escalation, the Kremlin pushed to internationalize SPFS, onboarding banks in Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and critically, Iran.
In January 2023, the central banks of Iran and Russia signed an agreement connecting their national interbank communication systems—Iran's SEPAM and Russia's SPFS—enabling about 700 Russian banks to exchange financial messages with Iranian banks, plus 106 non-Russian banks from 13 other countries. The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has explicitly warned foreign financial institutions about sanctions risks for joining SPFS, acknowledging that sanctioned Iranian banks have joined SPFS to retain financial connectivity given restrictions on using SWIFT.
CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), launched by the People's Bank of China in 2015, represents a more ambitious challenge. Unlike SWIFT, which is purely a messaging network requiring separate correspondent banking arrangements, CIPS combines payment messaging and settlement in a single system, settling directly in renminbi and removing the need for the dollar as an intermediary currency.
The growth has been extraordinary. In 2024, CIPS processed 8.2169 million transactions totaling RMB 175.49 trillion ($24.47 trillion), increases of 24.25% and 42.60% year-over-year respectively. By June 2025, CIPS had 176 direct participants and 1,514 indirect participants across 110+ countries. Monthly volume in June 2026 alone reached 810,563 transactions settling RMB 18.21 trillion ($2.67 trillion).
B. Central Bank Digital Currencies: Project mBridge
Project mBridge is perhaps the most technically sophisticated alternative to emerge. It is a multi-central bank digital currency (mCBDC) platform shared among participating central banks and commercial banks, built on distributed ledger technology to enable instant cross-border payments and settlement.
The project began in 2021 as collaboration between the BIS Innovation Hub, the Bank of Thailand, the Central Bank of the UAE, the People's Bank of China, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Saudi Arabia joined in 2024. The BIS formally exited the project in late 2024, leaving the participating central banks to continue operations independently—an important signal that the platform is transitioning from experiment to operational infrastructure.
By early 2026, mBridge had processed RMB 470 billion ($69 billion) in cumulative cross-border transactions, with more than 95% denominated in renminbi. The platform is now reportedly ready for commercialization and considering incorporation in Hong Kong. Its significance extends beyond speed—cross-border CBDC payments that once took days now settle in seconds—but to sovereignty: it allows trade settlement without passing through correspondent banks or the dollar-centric SWIFT network.
C. BRICS Pay and the Interoperability Vision
BRICS Pay represents an attempt to stitch national systems into a coherent alternative network. Rather than creating a single supranational currency—which founders on questions of monetary sovereignty and Chinese yuan dominance—the current approach focuses on interoperability.
The envisioned system would link Brazil's Pix, India's UPI, China's CIPS and UnionPay, and Russia's SPFS into a cross-border network where each currency remains fully sovereign. What changes is the infrastructure that allows them to interact. A prototype tested in Moscow in October 2024 demonstrated capacity for 20,000 transactions per second.
As of March 2026, BRICS Pay remains in pilot phase, with planned rollout beginning with foreign tourist payment access in BRICS nations, expanding to CIS countries and the Middle East, with broader BRICS+ integration by year-end. The realistic path is not replacement of SWIFT but interoperability between national payment rails, not a single replacement currency.
D. National and Regional Card Networks
The card payment layer is where alternatives have achieved the deepest market penetration:
UnionPay has become the world's second-largest card network by purchase transaction volume, capturing 33.15% of global brand-card purchase transactions in the first half of 2024—behind only Visa at 38.66%. With over 250 million cards issued outside mainland China across 83 countries, acceptance in 183 countries and regions, and 99 countries supporting UnionPay mobile payments, it has evolved from a domestic Chinese system into a genuine global challenger. The shift toward international transactions has been steep: roughly 0.5% of UnionPay transactions occurred outside China in 2015, compared with about 43% in 2025.
Mir (Russia) and Shetab (Iran) illustrate how bilateral integration can function under sanctions. Russia's Mir system, launched in 2014 after Visa and Mastercard suspended services in Crimea, now has over 475 million cards issued and represents over 75% of all domestic transactions in Russia. In November 2024, Iran and Russia linked their national payment systems, enabling Iranian citizens to withdraw rubles from Russian ATMs using Shetab-linked cards, and Russian Mir cardholders to make payments in Iran. The third and final phase of integration—allowing Iranians to make purchases at Russian stores using Shetab cards—is expected to be finalized in 2026.
Mada (Saudi Arabia), launched in 2015 to replace the older SPAN system, has become the backbone of the Kingdom's digital payments boom. It operates as a national switch enabling cross-border transactions and instant settlements, primarily in Saudi riyals. In the context of Saudi-China currency swap agreements and the kingdom's growing trade with BRICS nations, Mada represents a strategic national asset that could interoperate with alternative clearing systems.
Meeza (Egypt) demonstrates how national schemes drive financial inclusion. With over 40 million cards issued—representing more than 55% of all payment cards in Egypt—and processing over 1.02 billion transactions annually totaling approximately $26.74 billion, Meeza has created a domestic payment ecosystem that reduces reliance on international card networks. Critically, Meeza cards do not require a traditional bank account; Egyptians need only a national ID to obtain a prepaid card, bringing the unbanked into the digital economy.
RuPay (India) and UPI (Unified Payments Interface) form India's two-track strategy. While RuPay provides domestic card network independence, UPI has expanded internationally to eight countries including Singapore, UAE, France, and Mauritius, with 20+ target countries by 2029. India's digital rupee (e-Rupee) has processed over 1.3 million wholesale transactions in early 2026, primarily for interbank settlements and government payments, laying groundwork for cross-border CBDC integration.
Verve (Nigeria), Africa's first and largest domestic payments scheme, has issued over 70 million cards in Nigeria alone and expanded acceptance to 21+ African countries. It has achieved merchant acceptance with global platforms including Google, YouTube, Spotify, Netflix, and Uber, allowing Nigerian consumers to access international services in local currency.
Girocard (Germany) and BC Card (South Korea) represent advanced economy alternatives that preserve domestic payment sovereignty. Girocard operates across approximately 1.344 million terminals in Germany and has overtaken cash as the highest-turnover payment method at German checkouts. BC Card, South Korea's largest payment processor, has begun experimenting with foreign-currency stablecoin payments, completing a pilot in October 2025 that allowed overseas digital wallet users to make payments at Korean merchants using stablecoins converted to BC's digital prepaid cards.
E. Regional Integration: PAPSS, Onafriq, and M-Pesa
PAPSS (Pan-African Payment and Settlement System), launched in January 2022 by Afreximbank and the African Union, enables near-instant cross-border payments in local currencies across 15 operational countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Zambia. By connecting central bank RTGS systems and netting out daily balances, PAPSS eliminates the need for African trade to be intermediated through European or American correspondent banks. In February 2026, Kenya's Pesalink instant payment network partnered with PAPSS, enabling 80+ Pesalink participants to connect with 160+ PAPSS banks for 24/7 local-currency cross-border transfers.
Onafriq operates as the leading pan-African payments network, connecting businesses to 43 African markets through a single API, with access to nearly 1 billion mobile wallets, 500 million bank accounts, and 2,000 cross-border payment corridors. Its infrastructure bridges traditional banking and mobile money, enabling gig worker payouts, remittances, and B2B settlements across fragmented markets.
M-Pesa, Kenya's mobile money pioneer, was named among the Top 100 cross-border payment platforms for 2026 by FXC Intelligence, reflecting its evolution from domestic peer-to-peer transfers to a genuine cross-border rail.
IV. Sovereignty, Trade, and Savings: The Three Pillars of Attraction
The alternative financial infrastructure offers three interconnected benefits that explain its accelerating adoption.
National Sovereignty
For nations facing sanctions or merely seeking strategic autonomy, control over payment rails is synonymous with sovereignty. When the U.S. can sever a country's access to SWIFT or pressure Visa and Mastercard to suspend service—as happened to Russia in 2022—monetary policy independence becomes illusory. The alternative systems restore the ability to clear and settle payments according to national law rather than Washington's extraterritorial dictates.
PAPSS explicitly addresses this by enabling payments in local currencies, reducing the need to convert African currencies to the US dollar or euro for intra-African trade and helping central banks optimize liquidity management and reduce exposure to dollar fluctuations. Similarly, mBridge's governance framework is tailored to its unique decentralised nature, with each participating central bank operating a validating node.
Bilateral and Regional Trade
The alternatives are explicitly designed to facilitate trade between nations that Washington seeks to separate. The Iran-Russia SPFS-SEPAM linkage allows financial institutions in both countries to open letters of credit or process money orders and bank guarantees without SWIFT. The Mir-Shetab integration removes restrictions for electronic payments and opens a new chapter in economic and cultural cooperation.
For BRICS nations, the appeal is quantitative. BRICS members currently represent 35.4% of the world economy and around 45% of the global population. Enabling these nations to trade in their own currencies without dollar intermediation unlocks trade volumes currently suppressed by transaction costs and sanctions risk.
Cost Savings: Reclaiming Billions
The economic case is compelling. Consider the arithmetic:
PAPSS targets $5 billion in annual savings for African businesses by eliminating correspondent banking chains.
mBridge reduces cross-border payment costs by eliminating multiple intermediary banks and their associated fees. A typical SWIFT transfer can accumulate $15–$50 in fees per intermediary; mBridge settles peer-to-peer in seconds.
Stablecoin and blockchain rails cut cross-border costs to roughly 0.5% on-ramp/off-ramp with pennies in-network fees, compared to 2–4% FX spreads plus wire fees in traditional banking.
Domestic card networks like Meeza and Verve retain transaction fees within national economies rather than remitting them to Visa and Mastercard's U.S.-based revenue pools.
For Iran specifically, the savings are existential. By settling energy trade in yuan rather than dollars, Tehran avoids the full architecture of U.S. financial surveillance and the 3–5% effective tax imposed by dollar intermediation. Russia's experience after 2022 demonstrated that redirecting hydrocarbon flows toward eager buyers in Asia—primarily China and India—bypassing the dollar-dominated payment system resulted in energy revenues that soared far beyond pre-sanction levels despite reduced volumes.
V. Elements of Reliability: What Makes These Systems Attractive
For alternative financial infrastructure to transition from emergency workaround to genuine competitor, it must satisfy several criteria. The current generation of systems is meeting these tests in ways that previous attempts did not.
1. Technical Resilience and Speed
The new systems are built on modern architecture. mBridge uses a bespoke blockchain—the mBridge Ledger—compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, enabling real-time peer-to-peer settlement. CIPS processes transactions in real-time. PAPSS settles intra-African payments instantly rather than in 3–5 days. BRICS Pay's prototype demonstrated 20,000 transactions per second.
2. Multi-Currency and National Currency Settlement
Unlike SWIFT, which ultimately funnels most transactions through dollar correspondent accounts, the alternatives prioritize settlement in national currencies. BRICS Pay's core design principle is trade in national currencies—reduce FX risk and dependency. mBridge allows direct foreign exchange transactions between participating CBDCs without dollar conversion. CIPS settles directly in RMB.
3. Governance Decentralization
The most credible alternatives avoid single-point control. mBridge's governance framework was created specifically to match its unique decentralised nature, with rulebooks tailored to multi-jurisdictional operation. BRICS Pay is developing DAO governance for transparent decision-making.
4. Regulatory Compliance and Trust
Paradoxically, the alternatives are investing heavily in compliance to build trust. BRICS Pay emphasizes full AML/KYC, regulators-aligned architecture. PAPSS is compliant with global regulatory standards and overseen by African central banks. Onafriq maintains ISO 27001, CMML3, PCI DSS, and SOC2 certifications. This compliance investment is essential: the systems must be clean enough to avoid the stigma of sanctions evasion while robust enough to resist political pressure.
5. Interoperability Rather Than Replacement
The smartest strategy is not to challenge SWIFT head-on but to route around it. As BRICS Pay's developers state: BRICS Pay does not replace SWIFT, Visa, or Mastercard. It offers a parallel, compatible option—giving businesses and individuals choice in how they transact globally. This interoperability-first approach reduces switching costs and allows gradual migration.
6. Financial Inclusion
National schemes like Meeza and Verve demonstrate that alternative infrastructure can reach populations excluded by Western systems. Meeza's no-bank-account-required model and Verve's penetration of Nigeria's unbanked sectors create constituencies with a vested interest in domestic payment sovereignty.
VI. The Uncertain Road Ahead: Challenges and Potential
Despite remarkable progress, these alternatives face significant hurdles. SWIFT still connects over 11,000 institutions across 200+ countries with decades of regulatory integration. The dollar remains the dominant invoicing currency for global trade. Network effects are powerful: merchants accept Visa and Mastercard because consumers carry them; consumers carry them because merchants accept them.
Yet the trajectory favors the alternatives for several reasons.
First, U.S. aggression is not abating—it is expanding. The Iran war and associated sanctions have shaken confidence in the dollar among allies, not just adversaries. France has repatriated 129 tons of gold from the Federal Reserve. Canada has announced a $25 billion sovereign wealth fund to reduce U.S. economic dependence.
Second, the alternatives are compounding. Each new participant in CIPS, each new country accepting Mir cards, each new mBridge transaction builds network effects for the alternative ecosystem. Iran's integration with SPFS and Mir creates a template that other sanctioned or sovereignty-minded nations can replicate.
Third, the cost differential is widening. As blockchain rails mature and CBDC platforms scale, the 6.26% average remittance cost and 2–4% FX spreads of traditional banking look increasingly indefensible. For a company moving millions across borders monthly, the difference between SWIFT and blockchain rails translates into millions annually.
Fourth, the regulatory environment is shifting. The U.S. GENIUS Act and Europe's Instant Payments Regulation are forcing even Western systems to modernize, but they also legitimize the technological approaches—stablecoins, real-time settlement, ISO 20022 messaging—that underpin the alternative infrastructure.
The Architect of Its Own Competition
The United States set out to isolate Iran through financial warfare. In doing so, it has inadvertently become the architect of the most significant challenge to its own financial hegemony since Bretton Woods. The alternative systems catalogued here—SPFS and CIPS for wholesale clearing, mBridge for CBDC settlement, UnionPay and Mir for card payments, PAPSS and Onafriq for regional integration, BRICS Pay for multilateral interoperability—are not merely workarounds for sanctioned states. They are becoming the preferred infrastructure for a growing cohort of nations that value sovereignty over convenience and cost savings over habit.
The irony is profound: by demonstrating that access to the dollar system is conditional on political obedience, Washington has taught the world to diversify. By extracting billions in correspondent banking fees and FX spreads, Western institutions have created the economic incentive for their own displacement. And by disregarding international law in the application of extraterritorial sanctions, the U.S. has undermined the very trust that made its financial infrastructure the global standard.
These alternative systems will not replace SWIFT or Visa tomorrow. But they no longer need to. By offering reliable, cheaper, sovereign-compliant alternatives in an increasingly multipolar world, they have crossed the threshold from protest platforms to permanent fixtures. The economic war on Iran did not break the resistance of its target. It broke the monopoly of its author.
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