The Asian Clearing Union (ACU), with headquarters in Tehran, Iran, was established on December 9, 1974 at the initiative of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). The primary objective of ACU, at the time of its establishment, was to secure regional co-operation as regards the settlement of monetary transactions among the members of the Union and to provide a system for clearing payments among the member countries on a multilateral basis. In October 2013, Iran unveiled a plan suggesting that members of the union –Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Iran- employ a home-grown system developed by the Central Bank of Iran to get around SWIFT called SEPAM in Persian