When powerful countries find it increasingly difficult to move money through established international financial channels, they often look for another route.
That is the story behind A7, a Russian cross-border payments network that emerged as Moscow struggled with sweeping Western sanctions imposed after it invaded Ukraine.
The network is now seeking a stronghold beyond Russia, including in Nigeria, one of Africa’s largest economies and a major financial centre.
At first glance, the A7 looks like another financial technology venture built around cryptocurrency. But its reported structure is more significant. It combines digital assets and other financial instruments to provide alternative channels for cross-border payments at a time when Russian banks and businesses face restrictions in parts of the international financial system.
For Nigeria, however, the important issue is not simply that a Russian financial company has announced an office in Lagos. It is the reported connection between A7 and Nigerian businesses, particularly Pilot Finance Limited, the extent of A7’s activities in the country, and the compliance risks that its presence could create for Nigerian banks and financial institutions.
Much of the evidence surrounding the network also comes from foreign governments, investigative organisations and Russian officials. Some claims remain unverified, and allegations of sanctions evasion should not be treated as established criminal conduct.
A financial network born from isolation.
A7 was established in Russia in 2024, with Moldovan businessman Ilan Șor holding a 51 per cent stake and Russia’s state-owned Promsvyazbank, commonly known as PSB, holding 49 per cent, according to corporate and investigative records.
PSB is a Russian bank closely associated with the country’s defence sector and has itself been subjected to Western sanctions. Șor, a prominent Moldovan businessman and politician, has also been sanctioned by Western governments.
The timing of A7’s creation is important.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Western governments imposed extensive sanctions on Russian financial institutions and businesses. Some Russian banks were disconnected from SWIFT, the international messaging system that enables banks to communicate payment instructions across borders.
Russia could still trade with foreign countries, but settling those transactions through familiar financial channels became more difficult.
A7 emerged against that background. Its best-known financial instrument is A7A5, a rouble-backed digital asset used within the wider A7 network to facilitate transfers and settlement.
According to Pyotr Fradkov, chairman and chief executive of PSB, A7A5 recorded almost $140 billion in turnover between its launch in February 2025 and August 2026. He said the platform had about 15,000 regular business users and processed as many as 2,000 cross-border payments daily. Those figures are claims made by the Russian side and have not been independently verified.
The figures nevertheless illustrate the scale A7 says it has reached.
How A7 operates
The A7A5 is essentially a rouble-backed digital asset that forms part of the wider A7 payment network.
It allows value to be transferred digitally and settled through financial arrangements outside the conventional Western banking chain. But A7 is larger than the cryptocurrency.
Investigations by the Open Source Centre and the Centre for Information Resilience have described a network involving cryptocurrency, cash, promissory notes, corporate entities and financial intermediaries across several jurisdictions. The Centre for Information Resilience has reported that A7 uses a combination of traditional and digital financial mechanisms to facilitate cross-border payments.
The structure gives the network multiple avenues for moving value. A transaction does not necessarily have to depend on one bank, currency or payment route.
Fradkov has described A7 as a distributed settlement network involving financial institutions, trading companies, settlement centres and legal structures. He has presented that structure as a way of maintaining payments even when individual components face sanctions.
That is the Russian argument.
Western governments have taken a more critical view. The United Kingdom has sanctioned A7 and related entities, describing the network as part of Russia’s efforts to circumvent sanctions.
That does not mean every transaction involving A7 is illicit. It means Western authorities consider the network and some of its associated entities to pose sanctions-related risks.
Why Nigeria matters
Russia’s interest in Africa has expanded across trade, energy, defence and political relations. Finance is an important part of that expansion because trade ultimately requires a way to settle payments.
A7 provides Moscow with a potential financial bridge between Russian companies and African businesses without complete reliance on Western financial infrastructure.
Nigeria is particularly significant because Lagos is one of Africa’s major commercial and financial centres.
In September 2025, A7 announced the opening of offices in Lagos and Harare. The openings were attended by Russian Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov and Mikhail Dorofeev, deputy chairman of Promsvyazbank, according to an investigation by the Centre for Information Resilience.
Russian reports also suggested that Nigerian Finance Minister Wale Edun attended the Lagos event. However, CIR reported that Mr Edun said he did not attend, although he acknowledged that such an event may have taken place in Lagos.
The distinction is important. A7 has announced a presence in Nigeria, and investigators have documented a Lagos office. But that does not automatically establish a large operational footprint.
The Financial Times reported that the actual level of A7 activity in Nigeria remained unclear, with cryptocurrency professionals in Nigeria and Zimbabwe telling the newspaper they were unaware of significant A7 operations. Elise Thomas, a senior researcher at the Centre for Information Resilience, also said there was very little online footprint showing substantial activity in the countries where A7 claimed to be operating.
CIR’s investigation, however, provides evidence of a local Nigerian connection. It reported that A7 Nigeria appears to operate through Pilot Finance Limited, while companies called A7 Africa and A7 Nigeria were registered in Kyrgyzstan in the name of Nigerian businessman Chidiebere Emmanuel Ajaere.
CIR also identified Belarusian businessman Alexander Zingman and former Moldovan parliamentarian Igor Khimich, an associate of Ilan Șor, among people present at the Nigerian office opening.
These findings show a reported Nigerian connection, but they do not by themselves establish the volume or nature of financial transactions conducted through the Lagos operation.
The Pilot Finance issue
The Nigerian connection became more consequential in June 2026 when the United Kingdom sanctioned Pilot Finance Limited.
The UK’s official sanctions record shows that Pilot Finance was designated under Britain’s Russia sanctions regime. The measures include an asset freeze, director disqualification sanctions and trust-services sanctions.
The UK said there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Pilot Finance had obtained a financial or material benefit from A7 and had provided financial services or made funds or economic resources available to the network.
That wording needs to be understood carefully.
The British designation is a sanctions measure. It is not a criminal conviction. It establishes the UK’s stated basis for imposing sanctions, but it does not, on its own, prove that Pilot Finance committed a criminal offence or that every transaction associated with the company was unlawful.
For Nigeria’s financial sector, however, the designation is significant because it places a Nigerian financial company within an international sanctions dispute involving A7.
Why Nigerian banks should care
The most immediate risk to Nigerian banks is not necessarily deliberate participation in sanctions evasion. It is the possibility of becoming an unwitting link in a complicated financial chain.
A payment could originate from a legitimate-looking business, pass through an intermediary in another jurisdiction, be converted into a digital asset and eventually reach a person or organisation subject to sanctions.
That is why banks dealing with customers or counterparties connected to alternative payment networks need to establish who ultimately owns the business, where the money originated, who will receive it and what the transaction is intended to achieve.
Cryptocurrency does not automatically make transactions untraceable. Blockchain records can often provide a trail. The difficulty is connecting a digital wallet to the individual or organisation controlling it, particularly where several companies, jurisdictions and financial instruments are involved.
Alexander Browder, a cryptocurrency researcher who has investigated A7A5, has argued that the rouble-backed stablecoin has become an important instrument in Russia’s efforts to circumvent Western financial restrictions. His conclusions are based on his research and should be understood as an expert assessment, not as evidence that all A7 or A7A5 transactions are illicit.
For Nigerian banks and businesses, the appropriate response is therefore stronger due diligence, not an assumption that every transaction linked to A7 is criminal.
What Nigerian regulators need to watch
Nigeria is already developing a regulatory framework for digital assets.
On 20 August 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released proposed rules covering digital and virtual asset operations, including issuance, tokenisation, trading, custody, transfer and settlement. The proposed rules apply to entities operating in Nigeria, providing services to Nigerian residents or targeting Nigerian investors through digital channels.
The SEC has also admitted additional virtual asset service providers into its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme, which allows regulators to assess emerging business models while imposing supervisory requirements.
The A7 development gives those regulations a practical test.
Nigeria needs to accommodate legitimate digital financial innovation while ensuring that Nigerian financial institutions do not become exposed to sanctions evasion, money laundering or other illicit financial activity.
That requires effective customer due diligence, sanctions screening, beneficial ownership checks and transaction monitoring. It also requires regulators to understand digital-asset transactions and share information with foreign counterparts where necessary.
The SEC has separately directed capital-market operators to implement relevant Financial Action Task Force requirements and comply with sanctions-related measures. The challenge is that financial networks can move faster than regulators. When transactions involve offshore companies, digital wallets, intermediaries and several jurisdictions, traditional banking supervision alone may not be sufficient.
Africa needs alternatives, but not opaque ones
A7’s emergence should not obscure a legitimate African problem. Businesses across the continent still face expensive and complicated cross-border payments, foreign exchange constraints and fragmented financial systems. Initiatives such as the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System demonstrate that African countries themselves are seeking cheaper and more efficient ways to move money across borders.
The need for alternatives, however, does not automatically make every alternative suitable. The real concern is transparency, regulation and accountability.
Any payment network operating in Nigeria should be clear about who owns it, who controls it, which businesses can use it and how suspicious transactions are identified and reported.
For Nigeria, the A7 issue is therefore less about rejecting financial innovation than ensuring that innovation does not create a blind spot in the country’s financial system.
A7’s announced Nigerian presence is still not enough to establish that it has developed a major operational network in the country. But the Lagos office, the reported connection to Pilot Finance and the UK’s subsequent sanctions designation have made the issue difficult to ignore.
Nigeria’s financial institutions will need to distinguish between legitimate cross-border commerce and transactions carrying sanctions or illicit-finance risks. That distinction will become increasingly important as Russia and other countries develop alternative payment systems and as African economies seek greater control over how money moves across the continent.
For Nigeria, financial independence can be an opportunity. But it will only remain an opportunity if the routes through which money enters and leaves the country are transparent enough to be properly regulated.
