SWIFT

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, founded in 1973 — a secure messaging system banks use to instruct each other about payments. SWIFT does not hold, transfer, or clear money itself; it is closer to a highly secure, standardized postal service for payment instructions, with the actual movement of money happening through correspondent banking. Excluding a country's banks from SWIFT is a serious blow (removing the fast, cheap, universally trusted standard) without being an absolute technical barrier, since excluded banks can still communicate through slower, more expensive alternatives.

Learn about this term

Related Terms