In 1973, two hundred thirty-nine banks from fifteen countries founded the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, known as SWIFT, to replace the slow and inconsistent telex-based messaging that banks had used for cross-border payment instructions. SWIFT began live operations in 1977, providing a standardized, secure messaging format that let banks confirm transfers and other transactions between institutions in different countries with far less manual processing and fewer errors. The cooperative was headquartered in Brussels and governed by its member banks rather than by any single national government. SWIFT's standardized message formats became a foundation for international payment and settlement systems in the decades that followed.
Relevance to Trade History
SWIFT replaced ad hoc telex messaging with a standardized, secure network for cross-border payment instructions, becoming essential infrastructure for financing international trade.
Read the full story in our article The Telegraph and Faster Commercial Communication.
Source: Bank for International Settlements. See our Sources & Methodology page for how we select and verify references.