SWIFT
How the SWIFT network became the invisible backbone of global finance, moving trillions of dollars daily — and why being cut off from it is the ultimate financial sanction.
SWIFT isn't a bank. It doesn't hold money. It doesn't move money. It only sends messages. Eleven thousand banks in two hundred countries use SWIFT to tell each other that money should move. Every day, forty million messages pass through SWIFT's network. That's every wire transfer on Earth. The network emerged in nineteen seventy three as a solution to chaos. Before SWIFT, banks relied on phone calls, telegrams, and human operators to coordinate transfers. A message could take days. SWIFT standardized the language and made it electronic. Suddenly, transfers between any two banks became fast and reliable. SWIFT became so important that it became a vulnerability.
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