VTB has become the first Russian bank to launch money transfers to China in yuan, bypassing SWIFT, a messaging system for cross-border payments, Russia Today (RT) reported on Tuesday.

"The new reality is leading to a massive abandoning of the use of the US dollar and the euro in international payments," VTB CEO Andrey Kostin said in a statement, according to RT.

"We are the first Russian bank to install an alternative cross-border bank transfer service with China and plan to increase the volume of these transactions by five times by next year," he added.

VTB, Russia's second-largest lender,  said that a single capital transfer is limited to 20 million rubles ($330,000) with a maximum monthly limit of 100 million rubles. The bank plans to begin lending in yuan and other non-Western currencies later this year.

Major Russian banks, including VTB, have been banned access to SWIFT, a global financial artery that allows cross-border payments, since March, as part of Western-led sanctions against Russia for its conflict with Ukraine.