Swift

In these paper we discuss the orginis and the development of the Society of the Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication which we call it SWIFT, the foundation, the infrastructure that its support, the alternative systems, and the role of Swift in war on terror and in sanctions on the Iranian Regime cause of it suspicious Nuclear program

Introduction

What is Swift:

The growth in the global trade, the development of capital market beside the banks system, adding to this the globalization process and the wide raise of the international institutions lead the banks all over the world to develop an efficient interbank infrastructure which allow them to made international payments more accurate and with less error and definitely secure.

Figure 1: Example of a payment Instruction trnaslated into a SWIFT message

The Swift is not a bank and even isn't a settlement institution, according to their website, Swift is a non-profit organization that connect all of its members together to exchange financial information securely and reliably. Swift enables the bank to lowering costs, reducing operational risk and eliminates inefficiencies from their operations.

Swift doesn't hold any funds, and doesn't operate or manage any account for its customers, it's even doesn't store any financial information, it provides the secure exchange of financial data.

The Organization:

The headquarter of Swift located in Belgium, so the whole system operate under the Belgium law, it is founded in 1973 and then contain only 239 members from 15 countries, and the number of messages they delivered in this year was zero, the first 4 years was dictated for developing the system, writing the rules that defines liabilities and responsibilities, the first message was sent by Belgium prince in 1977, Today the organizations have 10,097 live users from 212 countries, according to the 2011 annual report, they sent 4,431,099,899 message and have 22 operational center all over the...