What is SWIFT? 8 Things You Need to Know

In our increasingly digital world, global communications and financial interactions are nigh inescapable for anyone in any industry or walk of life. The infrastructure in place for international transactions is complex and layered, containing moving parts that work in tandem to make things like transferring money nearly seamless. Many of those moving parts are enabled, supported, and developed by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), “the financial industry’s neutral and trusted infrastructure provider.” SWIFT has a variety of functions and goals, mostly having to do with making it easier for financial institutions to send and receive money quickly, efficiently, and, most importantly, securely.

This blog highlights eight things everyone should know about SWIFT:

1. SWIFT gpi

One of the newest developments is the SWIFT global payment initiative (gpi), a recent initiative to improve the customer experience of international payments. This includes making these transactions faster and easier, as well as being more transparent about the whole process, from the location and status of the payment to the costs involved in the transfer. These are specific issues that users wanted to see addressed, and SWIFT has made great strides already toward changing the landscape of international payments.

2. Real-Time Payments

SWIFT has been making innovations in the speed and efficiency of payments even before developing the gpi. Existing systems were integrated with gpi in order to allow global access to real-time payments after the successful development and implementation of domestic instant payment systems, such as the New Payments Platform in Australia and European Instant Payments. This kind of initiative required a massive cooperative effort to extend the ease of domestic payments to the global stage.

3. Customer Security Program

As fortifying the security of financial transactions is one of SWIFT’s major aims, a significant amount of their work is dedicated to various initiatives that fall under the umbrella of the Customer Security Programme (CSP). SWIFT members have to demonstrate their compliance with protocols and standards, thereby ensuring a certain baseline of security. Some of the specific goals of the CSP include increasing community transparency and reinforcing institutions’ ability to detect threats and prevent attacks.

4. Data and Analytics

Innovation can be difficult to implement on a wide scale if institutions don’t understand that change is necessary and helpful, so SWIFT conducts proofs of concepts to support new developments in fraud detection and network dynamics analysis, including the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Providing insights into the needs of the community, and the ability of new technologies to meet those needs, is an important part of effecting change on a global scale.

5. Financial Crime Compliance Services

In addition to laying out a standard for financial institutions to meet and requiring member institutions to comply with that standard, SWIFT also works to make compliance easier for organizations. They have implemented shared services that aid with many steps of compliance, including tools that screen transactions for sanctioned individuals and companies, a Know Your Customer (KYC) registry to streamline the process, and payment controls to protect against fraud and cyberattacks on your payment operations.

6. Member-Owned and Collaborative

SWIFT is not owned by a single corporation or run by an individual; rather, it is a cooperative collectively owned and controlled by member financial institutions that hold shares. It is overseen by central financial institutions in G10 countries, led by the country of Belgium and supported by such institutions as the United States Federal Reserve. The work that SWIFT does is vital to many countries, so cooperation and collaboration is incentivized and easily achieved.

7. Fueling Innovation

Priding itself on encouraging and supporting innovative thinking, SWIFT dedicates a significant amount of energy and resources to making advances that benefit financial institutions and customers worldwide. They aim to contribute to the flow of progress in financial services, standards, solutions, and security. From the collaborative identification of community problems to the data and analytics that make change possible, to the practical implementation of improved technologies and tools, SWIFT has been at the forefront of progress in the world of banking.

8. Global Reach and Impact

Few organizations have as massive an effect on the world as SWIFT. With more than 11,000 member institutions in over 200 countries, SWIFT aims to make its standards and practices globally applicable and globally useful. While many customers don’t tend to think twice about the infrastructure that goes into making financial transactions possible, financial institutions must know that they can rely on each link in the chain from endpoint to endpoint, and SWIFT helps to ensure that they can.

The dream of SWIFT is a noble one, and one that they work hard to achieve every day. While on the surface the goal is simply to help institutions “move value around the world reliably and securely,” the underlying principles of collaboration and cooperation are essential to the cause. A neutral organization whose purpose is to compile and share resources, provide tools and solutions, conduct analytics, enforce compliance, and support innovations that change the face of an industry should absolutely not be taken for granted.

To learn more about the main regulations financial services organizations need to comply with and tips to go beyond simple compliance for powerful cybersecurity using security configuration management (SCM) and file integrity monitoring (FIM), you can read our latest guide: https://www.tripwire.com/resources/guides/financial-services-cybersecurity-regulations

About the Author:

PJ Bradley is a writer on a wide variety of topics, passionate about learning and helping people above all else. Holding a bachelor’s degree from Oakland University, PJ enjoys using a lifelong desire to understand how things work to write about subjects that inspire interest. Most of PJ’s free time is spent reading and writing. PJ is also a regular writer at Bora. 

Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this guest author article are solely those of the contributor, and do not necessarily reflect those of Tripwire.