With Russia invading Ukraine earlier today, the U.S., the U.K, and the European Union are imposing sanctions. One of the possible sanctions discussed involves cutting off access to the international messaging system, Swift. And cutting a nation’s banks for Swift will result in significant consequences for remote workers who access international payments.
What is Swift?
Swift is an acronym for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. Or, in the words of Bloomberg, Swift can be compared to the “Gmail of global banking.”
Swift delivers messages among 11,000 financial institutions and organizations in more than 200 countries. These messages include orders, payments, FX exchanges, and trades.
How Does Swift Sanctions Affect Remote Workers in Russia?
For Russia, this will have a significant economic impact as it’s estimated that it could reduce the country’s gross product by 5% in a year. However, cutting off Russia will also have implications in the international panorama, considering the country is a key global energy supplier, it is an exporter of materials critical to building jet engines, electronics, and automotive.
But what about remote workers? How will they be affected?
If the U.S., the U.K, and the European Union decide to cut Russia off from Swift, it could highly impact how remote workers get paid. It would make it more challenging for them to access international clients.
And apart from the fact that they will not be able to receive transfers from other countries they will find other economic problems, such as the shortage of specially imported items, difficulties in paying rent of International applications like Airbnb.
As there are no transfers, they can affect some flights because the airlines could not use the money from what they sell in Russia. Because the limitation goes on both sides. It would impact tourism and with this, the related costs will rise.
