SWIFT is not a bank and holds no accounts or assets for its users. It carries messages such as payment instructions, securities settlement, and foreign exchange between financial institutions, while the settlement of funds itself takes place through other arrangements. A 2007 source describes it as a Belgian cooperative owned by financial institutions1.

It also handles message format standards, which include the older MT and a format based on ISO 20022. It acts as the registration authority that registers and publishes ISO 20022 messages2.

Notes

  1. Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, "Report of Findings: Privacy Commissioner of Canada v. SWIFT" (April 2, 2007), paragraphs 3, 4, 5, and 12. The source is from 2007 and does not state the scale, such as the number of member institutions. ↩

  2. Bank of Japan, "決済システムレポート 2024" (Payment and Settlement Systems Report 2024) (September 2024), page 54, Figure 39 (in Japanese). ↩