Russia's A7 international settlement platform has announced a new payment service that will allow customers to settle foreign invoices using USDT while recipients receive funds through conventional SWIFT bank transfers. According to an October 12 announcement distributed through Chainwire, the service, called A7 International, is scheduled to be presented on October 13 and will charge a fixed transaction fee of 0.3%. The platform is primarily intended for businesses involved in international trade, although individual customers will be eligible to use it.
The new service is being introduced less than two weeks after the United States imposed new sanctions on the A7 Network on October 1. According to FinCEN, companies operating as A7 Sub-Agents processed more than $17 billion in transactions between January 2025 and June 2026. U.S. authorities alleged that the network used companies registered in third countries to move payments linked to sanctioned Russian and Iranian entities. A7 claims to serve approximately 15,000 customers and processes around 2,000 transactions daily, with operations spanning more than 100 countries and handling approximately 19% of Russian companies' cross-border trade settlements during 2025. However, the situation has escalated as the U.S. Treasury designated the A7 Network a "transnational criminal organization" on October 7, a label typically reserved for drug cartels and human-trafficking groups, and named it one of Iran's "financial enablers."
Under the proposed arrangement, customers can pay invoices issued by foreign counterparties using Tether's USDT stablecoin. A7 will arrange for the recipient to receive the payment through a standard bank transfer in the required currency. However, the company has not disclosed which banks will process the transfers, which currencies will be supported, or how USDT payments will be converted into fiat currency before settlement. The announcement does not specify whether currency conversion costs or intermediary banking charges are included in the 0.3% transaction fee. The service leverages Tether's stablecoin infrastructure to convert crypto into fiat via SWIFT, creating a parallel payment channel outside sanctioned banking networks.
The service introduction comes as Russia has been developing rules for cryptocurrency transactions involving foreign trade while maintaining restrictions on domestic crypto payments. In July, the State Duma approved legislation covering crypto trading, custody services and international settlements, which took effect in September. Russian authorities have separately examined central bank digital currencies as another option for settling international transactions, with discussions between India and Russia beginning in September regarding a CBDC settlement mechanism for bilateral trade. The two countries recorded nearly $60 billion in bilateral trade during fiscal 2026 and have set a target of $100 billion by the end of the decade.
A7 was established in 2024 with the involvement of PSB Bank, formally known as Promsvyazbank, and provides international payment services for companies engaged in foreign trade. The company received an AA(RU) credit rating with a Stable outlook from Russian rating agency ACRA in October 2025. Its existing products include international payments, digital financial assets and promissory notes. The company has not provided a separate date for general customer access or disclosed the countries where the service will initially operate. Notably, A7 was created by Promsvyazbank (PSB), the state-owned bank that finances Russia's defense industry, together with Ilan Shor, a Moldovan businessman U.S. and EU authorities have described as a professional money launderer and the architect of a scheme that siphoned $20 billion out of Russia in the 2010s. The launch event itself features a state-bank chairman and a fugitive businessman as its marquee guests.
