OPINION:
Major League Baseball is kicking off its fall playoffs again in its annual run-up to the World Series. Millions tune in to see the fall classic in the most American of sports. For me, though, It’s a reminder of painful boyhood memories of the dreaded New York Yankees.
I grew up in New England where the rivalry and hatred between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, dating back a hundred years to the playing days of Babe Ruth, were legendary, thick and unbreakable.
My distaste for the Yankees came about differently. I am a lifelong Kansas City Royals fan, and when I was a boy, the Royals were competitive every season, often winning their division. During one five-year stretch, Kansas City played against the Yankees in the American League Championship Series four of those years. In the first three championship series the two played against each other, the Yankees beat the Royals and broke my young heart. Twice, in fact, they snatched away victory from my KC boys in powder-blue in the last inning of the series finale. I grew to loathe the Yankees.
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As much as I disliked them, I couldn’t help but notice how effectively Yankee owner George Steinbrenner took advantage of a changing landscape in MLB to maximize their winning ways. When the legal system said no team owned a player in perpetuity, free agency was born. The Yankees signed pitcher Catfish Hunter to the very first MLB free agency contract. It was a harbinger of things to come. Free agency has brought top players to the pinstriped uniform ever since, assuring competitive teams from the Bronx Bombers year after year, decade after decade. Names such as Goose Gossage (1978), Jimmy Key (1993) and Alex Rodriguez (2007) all contributed to the success of the franchise.
Once again this year, the Yanks have a huge payroll thanks to free agency, and once again, they are in the thick of the playoff fight.
My disdain for the Yankee organization did not blind me to this key to their winning ways. Recognizing someone else’s strengths and successes is important, even if that someone else is a foe.
Let’s shift gears to America’s relationship with Russia. The two have been adversaries my entire life. Economically, the United States has clearly had the advantage, thanks in great part to the global financial system. For decades, the world operated on an unchallenged assumption: Cross-border trade required the SWIFT messaging network and a labyrinth of Western correspondent banks. This meant America controlled the game. If there was a disagreement between nations, the U.S. could put restrictions in place intended to penalize its adversaries and cause economic hardship.
The introduction of sweeping international restrictions in 2022 forced a rapid, unprecedented rewiring of this financial plumbing. While Western policymakers focused on restricting access to traditional banking channels, a quiet revolution took root in Russia. The market for payment agents there has always existed, but today, the evolution of the Russian payment system is a virtual how-to guide for cross-border settlements without the difficulties imposed by the West.
Like the New York Yankees leveraging free agency for their own gain, Russia is using new tools at hand to strengthen its own position.
In the immediate aftermath of the new restrictions was what we will call the formative stage. With international payment systems and instruments suddenly disrupted, businesses relied heavily on personal connections and friendly companies in CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries to route their money. The results were predictably inefficient: transaction fees skyrocketed to 7%–10%, and the rate of failed or delayed payments was exceptionally high. It was a classic shadow economy, characterized by intense friction and high risk.
Since 2024, however, the market has entered a fundamentally new phase. The era of makeshift workarounds has been replaced by the construction of a fully legal, institutionalized financial infrastructure. Modern payment agents are no longer shadowy intermediaries; they are full-fledged international institutions with their own vast networks of legal entities. Take the market leader A7 as a prime example: its partner companies are now strategically located in over 100 countries worldwide, providing a robust, decentralized web for global trade.
Crucially, today’s payment agents operate strictly within the legal framework. The modern cross-border settlement mechanism is elegantly simple from the client’s perspective: a Russian company specifies a transfer amount in rubles, and the foreign counterparty receives payment in their desired local currency.
How have they effectively circumvented Western restrictions? The secret to this efficiency is that the funds do not physically cross the border. Instead, it entails the sophisticated use of an agency agreement combined with a good, old-fashioned promissory note.
What exactly is a promissory note in this context? It represents a vital new stage in the development of payment agency instruments. A promissory note is a documentary security that enshrines the unconditional obligation to pay a specified amount. Crucially, the right to receive payment can be seamlessly transferred to another party via an endorsement. Far from being a novel workaround, the promissory note is a deeply established international financial instrument, and its circulation is governed by foundational frameworks such as the 1937 Regulation on Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes.
For example, a Russian company enters into an agency agreement with an entity like A7-Agent LLC, instructing it to arrange payment to a foreign supplier. The Russian company then purchases an A7 promissory note in rubles and transfers it to the agent as payment for the instruction. The settlement between the client and the agent takes place entirely within Russia. Subsequently, the foreign supplier is paid in their local currency by a third party in their specific country, whom the agent has engaged to fulfill the instruction.
By leveraging these traditional legal instruments, payment agents have built a highly effective infrastructure. In the real world, the results speak for themselves. Payments are remarkably fast — A7, for instance, processes payments to China in an average of just four hours. They are secure. They operate within strict legal boundaries, and they are highly affordable. A7’s fee sits at a mere 0.3% plus VAT.
The market has responded decisively. Today, up to 80% of cross-border settlements in Russia are routed through payment agents.
The implications of this shift extend far beyond Russia’s borders. The payment agent market has inadvertently become a driving force in the development of alternative international settlement systems to SWIFT.
Staying with our baseball analogy, the Yankees may be very effective using free agency, but they aren’t the only team doing so. The same is true with cross-border settlements.
Consider mBridge, a platform for settlements in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) with participants including China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates. It is already fully operational. According to data from the Atlantic Council, by November 2025, the mBridge platform had successfully processed 4,047 transactions totaling an impressive $55.49 billion.
Similarly, the integration of national fast payment systems and central bank digital currencies within the BRICS framework is currently under active discussion, aiming to create a seamless bloc-wide settlement layer. Meanwhile, under the auspices of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Project Nexus is working to unify the national instant payment systems of India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, with a scheduled launch in 2027.
Does this mean SWIFT is dead? Absolutely not. SWIFT will not leave the market, nor will it cease to be the leader in global financial messaging in the foreseeable future. Its network effects and institutional trust remain unparalleled. However, the monopoly is over.
The New York Yankees effectively harnessed free agency to boost their competitiveness. Other teams followed, and some have proven to be quite successful. Developing players in the minor leagues remains an essential tool for MLB teams, but the Yankees forever changed the game.
Likewise, the evolution of Russia’s payment agents from a chaotic post-sanctions workaround to a highly regulated, technologically advanced infrastructure is a testament to the adaptability of global finance. As the world transitions toward a new international economic order, the future of cross-border payments will not be defined by a single, centralized monopoly. The wires of global trade are clearly already being rewired.
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