According to the CEO of the Bank of Industry and Mine, Iranian banks are now connected to SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. Ali Ashraf Afkhami, said that SWIFT is now open to Iranian banks, Bourse Press reported. In 2012, SWIFT cut off Iranian banks subjected to EU sanctions over Iran’s nuclear energy program, shutting down a major avenue of doing business with the outside world. However, Iranian banks, their overseas branches and affiliates were officially removed from SWIFT’s sanctions list on January 17 after Iran’s nuclear accord with the six world powers came into effect. Afkham added that although Iranian banks could open LCs on the first day of the implementation of the nuclear deal, they had to resort to the traditional method for opening LCs because they had access only to the pre-sanctions’ passwords for LCs. “Even though reconnecting to SWIFT took almost three weeks, it is now ‘routinely’ processing transactions for Iranian banks.”
