SWIFT
AdvancedSWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a global network that allows banks and other financial institutions to send secure, standardised messages to each other about payments and other transactions.
SWIFT was founded in 1973 and is based in Belgium. It is owned by its member institutions and connects more than 11,000 banks and financial organisations in over 200 countries and territories.
SWIFT does not move money itself. Instead, it carries instructions, such as a message telling a bank to pay a certain amount to an account at another bank. The money then moves through accounts that banks hold with each other or through central bank systems.
For example, when a business in Japan pays a supplier in Canada, its bank sends a SWIFT message to the supplier's bank or an intermediary bank, using a SWIFT code to identify the receiving bank.
Because SWIFT is central to international finance, access to it can be used as a tool of sanctions. Several Russian banks were removed from SWIFT in 2022. SWIFT has also worked to make cross-border payments faster and more transparent, including tracking payments from start to finish.
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