You need to be older than 50 to remember the pre-Swift era in banking. Entire generations of bankers have grown up regarding “a safe and secure messaging system” as a basic infrastructure that they never needed to worry about. Starting out in 1973 with just 239 members in 15 countries, today Swift (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, to give it its full title) connects 7500 organisations that send more than 11 million messages a day.
But as with every piece of infrastructure, the Swift network faces challenges from technological change. The arrival of the internet, as well as the services offered by advanced telecoms companies, means that if bankers were building Swift from scratch today they would do it entirely differently. Can Swift adapt to this new era – or is it in danger of becoming a monument to the past, just like the statues on Easter Island?