Russia and Iran, countries whose banking systems have been cut off from the SWIFT system for exchanging payment messages as a result of sanctions, plan to use the new system to increase trade volume to $10 billion a year, Business Insider writes.

Several Iranian central bank officials confirmed the partnership with the Russian central bank. According to the plan, the new communication system created by Iran and Russia will connect about 700 Russian banks and 106 foreign banks from 13 other countries, including Iran.

Russia also plans to develop a common gold-backed cryptocurrency with Iran to challenge the U.S. dollar.

Iranian banks were first disconnected from SWIFT in 2018 when the US re-imposed sanctions on Iran. Russian banks were also banned from accessing the worldwide communication system last year.

Based in Belgium, the messaging network is crucial to facilitating financial transactions between banks: it connects more than 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries, sending an average of 42 million messages a day.