Russia (bbabo.net), - The Russian banking system is stable, has sufficient capital and liquidity to function smoothly in any situation. All customer funds on the accounts are saved and available at any time, according to a message published by the Bank of Russia.

"Banking services are provided as usual. Bank cards of all banks in Russia also continue to work normally. The transfer of financial messages within the country in any scenario is provided by the Financial Message Transfer System (SPFS) of the Bank of Russia," the Central Bank said.

The Central Bank recalled that they have the necessary resources and tools to maintain financial stability and ensure the operational continuity of the financial sector.

"The Bank of Russia will continuously provide banks with cash and non-cash liquidity in rubles. The "fine-tuning" REPO auction on Monday will be held on an unlimited basis, with the full satisfaction of all applications received from banks. To maximize the possible need for banks in current liquidity, the Bank of Russia will significantly expand Lombard list," the regulator said in a statement.

Earlier, within a few days, the Bank of Russia introduced a number of measures to increase stability in the financial market. This included holding several extraordinary fine-tuning repo auctions to provide liquidity to banks, interventions in the foreign exchange market to stabilize the ruble exchange rate, a ban on short sales in the stock market, and an increase in cash withdrawals to banks to replenish ATMs.

The US Treasury announced on Thursday sanctions against a number of major Russian banks in connection with a special military operation in the Donbass. Blocking sanctions were imposed on VTB, Sovcombank, Novikombank, Otkritie - blocking assets in US jurisdiction, a ban on dollar transactions and any transactions with American counterparties, including through correspondent accounts, sanctions on correspondent accounts were imposed on Sberbank - all US financial institutions are ordered close them within 30 days, partial restrictions were introduced on the operations of the Moscow Credit Bank, Alfa-Bank, Gazprombank and Rosselkhozbank. Prior to this, European and American blocking sanctions were imposed on Promsvyazbank and Rossiya Bank.

All payment bank cards issued by all banks work and will continue to work throughout Russia to pay for goods and services, transfers and transactions through ATMs without restrictions, emphasized the Bank of Russia. All money of clients of all banks on accounts linked to cards is saved and available to clients at any time, noted in the Central Bank. At the same time, customers of sub-sanctioned banks will not be able to pay with the cards of these banks abroad and use them to pay for services in online stores and service aggregators registered in countries that support sanctions. In addition, the cards of these banks will not be able to be used with ApplePay and GooglePlay services, but the standard contactless payment with these cards is available in full throughout Russia, the Central Bank indicated.

The day before, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said in a video message that she would propose to the leaders of the EU countries to freeze the assets of the Bank of Russia. She also said that it could also be about disconnecting a number of Russian banks from the SWIFT international financial messaging system. According to her, restrictive measures will be coordinated by the European Union, the United States and Canada.

This week, Russia's international reserves reached another historic high. Their volume increased over the week by $3.6 billion and amounted to $643.2 billion.

bbabo.Net