SWIFT platform

• Society for World interbank financial telecommunication system
• A service offered by a cooperative society being used by around 200 countries.
• provides a network that enables financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized and reliable environment
• does not facilitate fund transfer but facilitate the order of transfer
• messaging service facilitating information globally about financial transactions especially transactions of cross-border nature.
• founded in Brussels in 1973 headquartered in Belgium
• Recently introduced GPI tracker system that is Global Payment innovation tracker system to track Global transactions in real time basis.a
• Today, it is easy to walk into a bank and transfer money anywhere around the globe. But how does this happen? Behind most international money and security transfers is the SWIFT system, a vast messaging network used by banks and other financial institutions to quickly, accurately, and securely send and receive information such as money transfer instructions. Every day, nearly 10,000 SWIFT member institutions send approximately 24 million messages on the network
• SWIFT assigns each financial organization a unique code that has either eight characters or 11 characters. The code is called interchangeably the bank identifier code (BIC), SWIFT code, SWIFT ID, or ISO 9362 code.
• As powerful as SWIFT is, keep in mind that
  • it is only a messaging system
  • SWIFT does not hold any funds or securities
  • nor does it manage client accounts.
• Prior to SWIFT, Telex was the only available means of message confirmation for international funds transfer. Telex was hampered by low speed & security concerns.
• To circumvent these problems, SWIFT system was formed in 1974. Seven major international banks formed a cooperative society to operate a global network that would transfer financial messages in a secure and timely manner.
• SWIFT provide services to the following:
  • Banks
  • Brokerage Institutes and Trading Houses
  • Securities Dealers
  • Asset Management Companies
  • Clearing Houses
  • Depositories
  • Exchanges
  • Corporate Business Houses
  • Treasury Market Participants and Service Providers
  • Foreign Exchange and Money Brokers
• Swift offers services like ;
  • Applications – SWIFT connections enable access to a variety of applications which include real-time instruction matching for treasury and forex transactions, banking market Infrastructure for processing payment instructions between the banks, and securities market infrastructure for processing clearing and settlement instructions for payments, securities, forex, and derivatives transactions.
  • Business Intelligence – SWIFT has recently introduced dashboards and reporting utilities which enable the clients to get a dynamic, real-time view of monitoring the messages, activity, trade flow, and reporting. The reports enable filtering based on region, country, message types, and related parameters.
  • Compliance Services – Aimed at services around financial crime compliance, SWIFT offers reporting and utilities like Know Your Customer (KYC), Sanctions, and Anti-Money Laundering (AML). (See related: US And EU Sanctions Against North Korea)

Messaging, Connectivity, and Software Solutions – The core of SWIFT business resides in providing a secure, reliable, and scalable network for the smooth movement of messages. Through its various messaging hubs, software, and network connections, SWIFT offers multiple products and services which enable its end clients to send and receive transactional messages.