The Development of Cross-Border Payments using Digital Assets and Digital Currencies to Achieve Economic Development Goals

The subject of the study is the sphere of cross–border payments as a factor in the restoration of Russian foreign trade in the face of sanctions pressure from Western countries. The relevance of the topic of the article is due to the fact that in order to accelerate economic growth, an early recovery of export volumes and preservation of import volumes are required, which, among other things, encounter problems in settlements with foreign counterparties, solved through the digital transformation of the financial sector and the use of new payment mechanisms to alleviate pressure on Russia and its trading partners. The purpose of the work is to assess the current state of the use of digital financial assets in cross–border settlements with friendly jurisdictions. The article finds that in 2022–2023, the volume of Russian imports and exports underwent significant fluctuations due to the reconfiguration of Russian foreign trade to the markets of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. At the same time, the need to create a safe and effective payment mechanism protected from the negative impact of primary and secondary sanctions came to the fore. The key problems in the field of international payments have become the disconnection of the largest Russian banks from SWIFT and the large-scale blocking of correspondent accounts of Russian banks by foreign counterparties, which can be overcome through the use of cross-border settlements through such instruments as digital financial assets, cryptocurrency, and digital currencies of central banks. However, it is concluded that in the presence of a well-formed legislative framework and obvious potential to mitigate sanctions pressure, the use of new payment mechanisms is difficult due to the lack of necessary regulatory and/or infrastructure solutions.

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