The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is a member-owned cooperative that operates a secure messaging network used by banks and other financial institutions to exchange standardized instructions about payments, securities, trade and treasury transactions. SWIFT does not hold accounts, clear transactions or move money. When a bank sends a SWIFT payment message, the funds themselves move separately, through debits and credits on accounts that banks hold with one another or with a central bank.
SWIFT is headquartered in La Hulpe, Belgium, and connects more than 11,000 institutions in over 200 countries and territories. For a profile of the organization, see the SWIFT industry body profile.
History
SWIFT was founded in 1973 by 239 banks from 15 countries to replace telex, which was slow, unstructured and prone to error. Its network went live in 1977. Over the following decades it extended its services from banks to securities firms, market infrastructures and corporate treasuries, and its standards became the default language of international banking. In 2017 it launched SWIFT gpi, which added end-to-end tracking of cross-border payments using the Unique End-to-End Transaction Reference (UETR).
How SWIFT works
Each participant is identified by a Bank Identifier Code (BIC), commonly called a SWIFT code. A customer credit transfer is traditionally sent as an MT103 message, which carries the ordering customer, beneficiary, amount, currency and charging instructions such as the OUR, SHA and BEN charge codes.
When the sending and receiving banks do not hold accounts with each other, the payment passes through one or more correspondent banks. Each bank in the chain debits and credits nostro and vostro accounts, and SWIFT messages tell them what to do. A US dollar payment, for example, will usually settle between US banks through CHIPS or Fedwire, with SWIFT carrying the instructions to and from the banks abroad.
Migration to ISO 20022
SWIFT has moved cross-border payments from its legacy MT format to ISO 20022 messages, which carry richer, structured data. The migration began in March 2023, and the coexistence period for cross-border payment instructions ended in November 2025. The richer data helps sanctions screening and reconciliation but requires banks to carry structured address and remittance details.
Governance and oversight
SWIFT is a cooperative society under Belgian law, owned by its member institutions and governed by a board drawn from them. It is overseen by the National Bank of Belgium together with the central banks of the G10 countries and, through a broader oversight forum, other central banks. Because SWIFT is a critical service provider rather than a payment system, oversight focuses on its security, resilience and governance.
SWIFT and sanctions
As a Belgian entity, SWIFT must comply with EU law. It disconnected sanctioned Iranian banks in 2012 under EU regulations, and in 2022 the EU required the removal of several Russian banks following the invasion of Ukraine. Disconnection does not freeze funds, but it makes cross-border payments far harder for the excluded banks. Partly in response, Russia developed its own messaging system, and China built CIPS for renminbi payments. Banks remain responsible for screening SWIFT messages against lists such as the SDN list.
Common misconceptions
- "Sending money by SWIFT": SWIFT sends the instruction; settlement depends on correspondent accounts and local clearing systems.
- SWIFT and delays: most delays come from compliance checks, cut-off times, missing data or the correspondent chain, not from the messaging network itself. A payment trace or payment investigation usually involves the banks, not SWIFT.
- SWIFT and fees: SWIFT charges members for messages, but the deductions customers see are usually correspondent and beneficiary bank charges.