
SWIFT has been actively involved in various CBDC-related projects, including a wholesale CBDC initiative in collaboration with the New York Federal Reserve Bank, utilizing a regulated liability network.
SWIFT is a member-owned cooperative through which the financial world conducts its business operations with speed, certainty and confidence.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) provides a network that enables financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized and reliable environment. SWIFT also sells software and services to financial institutions, much of it for use on the SWIFTNet Network, and ISO 9362. Business Identifier Codes (BICs, previously Bank Identifier Codes) are popularly known as “SWIFT codes”.
The majority of international interbank messages use the SWIFT network. As of 2015, SWIFT linked more than 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries and territories, who were exchanging an average of over 15 million messages per day (compared to an average of 2.4 million daily messages in 1995). SWIFT transports financial messages in a highly secure way but does not hold accounts for its members and does not perform any form of clearing or settlement.
SWIFT does not facilitate funds transfer: rather, it sends payment orders, which must be settled by correspondent accounts that the institutions have with each other. Each financial institution, to exchange banking transactions, must have a banking relationship by either being a bank or affiliating itself with one (or more) so as to enjoy those particular business features.
SWIFT is a cooperative society under Belgian law owned by its member financial institutions with offices around the world. SWIFT headquarters, designed by Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura are in La Hulpe, Belgium, near Brussels. The chairman of SWIFT is Yawar Shah, originally from Pakistan, and its CEO is Gottfried Leibbrandt, originally from the Netherlands. SWIFT hosts an annual conference, called Sibos, specifically aimed at the financial services industry.
SWIFT has been actively involved in various CBDC-related projects, including a wholesale CBDC initiative in collaboration with the New York Federal Reserve Bank, utilizing a regulated liability network.
The experiment was built on Swift’s earlier successes in connecting Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and digital assets with existing and emerging payment systems.
Asides from integrating a USDC payment rail, Xapo Bank recently partnered with Faster Payment System (FPS) to extend its global reach.