Episode 163 - Payments Infrastructure and Foreign Policy

In this timely episode of Payments on Fire®, Yvette Bohanan has gathered teammates at Glenbrook (Elizabeth McQuerry, Erin McCune, Cici Northup, and Joanna Wisniecka) to discuss the payment infrastructure supporting the foreign policy actions being taken as a result of the situation in Ukraine. In the past week, the UK, EU, and Switzerland announce sanctions against Russia, – with Switzerland setting aside a long-standing tradition of neutrality in participating in these actions and the US announcing sanctions against Russia’s central bank in a move that prohibits Americans from doing any business with the bank as well as freezes its assets within the United States. These measures are also targeting the National Wealth Fund of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. As markets opened February 28, the Russian Ruble had fallen 29% against the dollar to an all-time low, after the U.S., European Union and Canada agreed to disconnect some Russian banks from the SWIFT interbank messaging system. We’re going to explore SWIFT and other payment infrastructure used to implement foreign policy on a routine basis, and why these recent announcements, in some respects, are taking this to a new level.