The Swift international payment system is the infrastructure used by almost all of the world's banks and financial institutions to order standardized and secure transactions of all kinds: purchases, sales, payments... Basically, it is a messaging technology platform that connects around
11,000 entities of all kinds in more than 200 countries
.
Being expelled from this system represents an operational block for the affected entities and all their clients, both retail and wholesale.
What volume of money does it move?
The system executes the communication of
international global payments worth 100,000 million daily
, a third of the total payments made, according to the platform itself.
It is thus, by far, the main global financial infrastructure in this sense, although not the only one.
In 2022, this platform plans to launch a new version adapted to a payment ecosystem that is evolving very quickly and has
alternative systems in China or in digital markets.
Who rules Swift?
The legal status of the system is that of an international financial cooperative that has its headquarters in Belgium and is subject to the regulatory framework of this country.
Its participants are
3,500 institutions and banks from around the world and it is governed by a board of 25 directors,
which in turn is supervised by the central banks of the G-10 (Belgium, Canada, Italy, France, Japan, Holland, United Kingdom, United States plus the ECB Since 2012 other central banks such as Australia, China, Saudi Arabia... and Russia have joined.
Does the platform decide the expulsion of Russia?
The system declares itself neutral and subject to Belgian regulations, which in turn are subject to the European Union.
It is the EU that decides that Russian banks stay out of the system.
Are there precedents?
In 2012, the EU decided to remove Iran
and its financial system from the financial communication platform.
Swift disconnected the country's banks from his system, isolating them from any operation and forcing them to cobble together an alternative system of their own.
The sanction lasted four years and in 2016 he accepted the reinstatement of several Iranian banks.
The Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014
also saw the banning of some of its banks.
What effects does punishment have?
When talking about the exclusion of Russian banks from the system, it must be borne in mind that not only Russian sales and collections would be blocked, but also that isolation prevents other countries from operating, therefore, either due to the fact that they cannot collect merchandise or services already delivered well for not being able to sell more,
the effects of the decision will have consequences in the rest of the economies
.
What kind of lockdown has been ordered?
Partial.
Russian entities and banks have been excluded, but operations related to the purchase of fuel and energy are excluded, which means that
66% of Russian exports will continue to operate.
The blow is very severe and makes it difficult to finance the invasion of Ukraine that Russian President
Vladimir Putin
has undertaken .
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