A7A5, a rouble-linked stablecoin, has processed nearly $140bn in cumulative transactions since it began operating in February 2025, Pyotr Fradkov, chairman of state-owned PSB Bank, said in an interview with Moscow-based business daily RBC.
Russia-Linked A7A5 Handled $140bn in Stablecoin Payments: RBC
11 August 2026 - 06:56 UTC
The token is the settlement asset for A7, a cross-border payments platform that PSB set up in late 2024, after Western sanctions were imposed on Russia, to route international transactions outside conventional banking channels. A7 is 49% owned by PSB, with Moldovan businessman Ilan Shor, who was sanctioned by the US and EU for election interference in Moldova, holding the remaining 51%.
A7A5's market cap sits at $472.7mn on CoinGecko and $501.3mn on CoinMarketCap – short of Fradkov's own $570mn claim. The $140bn cumulative turnover works out to each token changing hands roughly 250 to 300 times against current supply.
Mid-sized, small companies
Fradkov said A7A5, which debuted in February 2025, now underpins as many as 2,000 platform payments a day and 15,000 regular corporate clients, according to a 10 Aug report. "These are payments of different sizes. Two thousand payments automatically indicates that they involve both mid-sized companies and small businesses," Fradkov said, in Sandmark's translation from the Russian.
A7A5 is available on the Tron and Ethereum blockchains and is issued by Kyrgyzstan-based Old Vector LLC, according to blockchain-analytics company Elliptic.
PSB, also known as Promsvyazbank, is a Russian state-owned bank that, since 2018, has been focused on serving the defence industry and state defence contracts, according to the US Treasury Department, which sanctioned Fradkov and PSB in February 2022.
Distributed pools
The bank executive said the A7 model does not violate sanctions because it does not involve a conventional cross-border payment but operates through distributed liquidity pools and a network of settlement centres, partner financial institutions, trading structures and legal arrangements in multiple jurisdictions.
Fradkov claimed that A7A5 is the largest non-dollar stablecoin. "It was created not as another exchange-traded token, but as an element of A7’s own settlement infrastructure," he was quoted as saying.
He said that A7 charges a 0.3% fee plus VAT, has paid 25.5bn roubles (about $310mn) in taxes since inception, and is profitable, without disclosing profit figures.
Sanctions workaround
According to blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, A7 is a highly specialized, state-backed financial architecture designed specifically to bypass Western sanctions and the SWIFT interbank messaging network. The network is built on a tight partnership between state military banking, political operatives and a massive web of international front companies, TRM said.
In a June report, TRM said an onchain analysis of A7-linked addresses identified connections to actors across the globe, including Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, North Korean state hackers, Hamas, and internationally designated financial facilitators.
