Russia’s A7 financial platform is processing about 20% of the country’s foreign-trade payments, creating a vast alternative channel for transactions that bypass western sanctions.
The Russian “shadow bank”, launched in late 2024, handles more than $100bn in payments a year, according to figures cited by the company in a Wall Street Journal investigation published on 10 August 2026 and reported by L’Express. A7 was created with the involvement of Russia’s Promsvyazbank and has become a key instrument for Russian businesses and state structures seeking to maintain international payments despite restrictions imposed by the US, UK and EU.
The platform combines cryptocurrency, bills of exchange and a network of front companies in Kyrgyzstan, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and other jurisdictions. Its rouble-backed stablecoin, A7A5, is secured by deposits at Promsvyazbank and can be converted into USDT, the Tether stablecoin. That allows Russian companies to turn roubles into digital assets and pay foreign suppliers outside the conventional banking routes.
A payment network built beyond SWIFT
Promsvyazbank, a sanctioned Russian bank focused on servicing the defence sector, owns 49% of A7. The platform has received public political backing from the Kremlin and presents itself as a Russian equivalent of Western Union, operating without reliance on SWIFT or the dollar.
A7’s stated share of Russian foreign-trade payments gives the system significance well beyond a niche cryptocurrency operation. A substantial proportion of its transactions are conducted in Chinese yuan through China, while intermediary companies help conceal the Russian origin of payments and preserve access to international banking.
The infrastructure is used to pay for dual-use goods, components for unmanned aerial vehicles and civilian products. Its apparent ability to handle such a volume of trade illustrates how quickly Russia has built alternative financial mechanisms since leading Russian banks were cut off from SWIFT and broad western sanctions were imposed after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Sanctions have not stopped the system
The continued operation and expansion of A7, despite sanctions against the platform and people connected to it, exposes a central weakness in the traditional approach to financial restrictions. Publicly designated legal entities can be targeted while the banks, cryptocurrency exchanges, nominee-director networks and intermediary companies that sustain their transactions continue to function.
Bills of exchange, fictitious invoices and front companies make it harder both to trace payments and to hold Russian and foreign participants accountable. The use of several jurisdictions also fragments responsibility: a transaction may begin with a Russian business, pass through a company in Kyrgyzstan or the UAE, and be settled through digital assets or yuan-linked banking channels elsewhere.
That makes pressure on intermediary jurisdictions essential. Without tougher diplomatic engagement and secondary sanctions against local banks and companies that systematically service Moscow’s evasion networks, restrictions on the best-known Russian entities will remain vulnerable to circumvention.
From enforcement to prevention
The scale of A7 suggests that regulators need to move beyond delayed, targeted measures and identify new payment schemes while they are being created. Greater and faster information-sharing between financial intelligence units would help detect suspicious transactions involving stablecoins, nominee companies and unusual trade documentation before the networks become established.
The platform is also developing projects involving gold and plans to expand in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. That ambition points to a broader strategic risk: Russia is not merely replacing individual banks or payment routes, but helping to build an alternative international settlement infrastructure less dependent on the dollar and western financial institutions.
Western governments therefore face a choice that cannot be resolved through sanctions alone. They must close the channels that allow Russia to move money while also offering countries in the Global South competitive financial and economic terms, or risk seeing circumvention networks become a lasting feature of international trade.
Should western governments focus first on secondary sanctions against intermediary jurisdictions, or on building more attractive alternatives to Russia’s emerging payment networks?
