A7, a state-backed Russian payment network founded less than two years ago, says it now handles nearly 20 percent of Russian foreign-trade payments, more than $100 billion a year. [1] President Vladimir Putin appeared by video last year at a branch opening. [1] The United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have sanctioned the company. [1] That is Saturday's operating claim. It is not proof that Swift has a replacement.
Ilan Shor founded A7. A Moldovan court convicted him of fraud and money laundering for helping extract $1 billion from three banks in 2014. [1] He fled while under house arrest, denies the charges, and calls them political. [1] He lives near Moscow, is 39, and goes by "Travolta" in the company's internal chat, according to messages hackers leaked last year. [1] In 2024 he teamed with Promsvyazbank, the state defense lender already cut off from Swift, to launch the network. [1] The bank, now PSB, still shows a 49 percent stake. The registry hides the majority owner. [1]
Shor told TASS in July that the Western system "enslaved the whole financial world" and that A7 gives companies and countries freedom "because our system is immune to sanctions." [1] Immune is a marketing word. The tooling described on Saturday is the opposite of immunity. It is camouflage.
The Open Source Centre, a London group spun out of RUSI, says A7 moves money through shell companies in Kyrgyzstan, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates. [1] The shells have plausible websites and local bank accounts. OSC says A7 staff in Moscow control them. [1] To keep the banks calm, the group says, A7 uses artificial intelligence to forge invoices, including realistic stamps generated with OpenAI. [1] A person familiar with the matter told the Journal that OpenAI has found no evidence A7 is currently using its models. [1] Current is not historical.
On March 11, 2025, OSC says, a Kyrgyz front paid a Chinese supplier about $1 million for drone parts. The fake invoice listed auto-body polish, child car seats, and other car accessories. [1] The report drew on files and chat logs hackers released last September, then checked against customs records and court filings. [1] A Shor-backed political group hit by the same hack has said some leaked conversations were fabricated. [1] A7 did not comment on the hack. [1] Representatives of A7 and Shor did not answer the Journal. [1]
Crypto is the other pipe. TRM Labs, in a June report, said crypto in A7's operations functions as a channel for actors already excluded from ordinary banking. [1] A7 backed A7A5, a ruble-pegged token that analysts say is swapped into Tether. [1] Chainalysis counted more than $2.2 billion through one such swapping service and found the activity heavy on weekdays, thin on weekends — the clock of offices, not of a 24-hour underground. [1]
A 2025 A7 presentation put 65 percent of volume in yuan. [1] The website touts four-hour transfers to China. [1] Offices have opened in Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Expansion is eyed in Latin America and the Middle East. [1] The European Union sanctioned African affiliates in July. [1] Executives have suggested A7 could become a Russian-led alternative to Swift. [1] Elise Thomas, an investigator at the Centre for Information Resilience, said reaching a Swift equivalent "would be very ambitious." [1] "But never say never. It's a threat worth taking seriously." [1]
At June's St. Petersburg forum, A7's stand featured a giant roly-poly toy. [1] The Russian word for those toys is also a word for a person who keeps standing up. Digital billboards in Moscow advertise cheap outbound transfers. Filipp Kirkorov sang a ditty about defying European sanctions. [1] The website shows flags of dozens of countries, including the United States, China, and Iran. [1] A billboard is not a correspondent bank.
Saturday's Wall Street Journal feature, published in Livemint at 10:28 a.m. IST, files A7 as the Kremlin's hottest startup. [1] Sanctions accounts will file it as Swift 2.0. The completed record is an operating claim of $100 billion, a convicted founder, a hidden majority owner, shells, forged invoices, a weekday token, and a boast of immunity from a network that still needs other people's banks. Resilience on a toy is not a completed alternative to Swift.
A newspaper that covered only Shor's TASS line would tell readers the West has lost the switch. A newspaper that covered only the OpenAI denial would tell them the paperwork is old news. The completed Saturday record is a sanctioned rail that says it moves a fifth of Russia's trade, still doing so by looking like someone else. That is enough for a feature. It is not a new system.
-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco