A Brief History of SWIFT

In this section:

Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is a set of standards for formatting information that is electronically exchanged between one financial or corporate entity and another.

By specifying a standardized, computer-readable format for transferring data, SWIFT enables the automation of financial transactions around the world. It provides a common, uniform language through which computers can communicate for fast and efficient transaction processing.


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Early Standardization Efforts

Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) provides secure messaging services and interface software to more than 7400 financial institutions in more than 200 countries.

SWIFT was founded in 1973 by 239 banks in 15 countries to create a unified international transaction processing and transmission system. In 1977, Prince Albert of Belgium sends the first SWIFT message. At this stage, SWIFT has in excess of 513 member banks in more than 15 countries. In 1987 SWIFT membership expands to include financial institutions operating in securities and money markets.


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The SWIFT FIN Standard

Development of the SWIFT FIN standards has progressed since its inception. Each year members of the SWIFT community meet in order to review current SWIFT FIN standards and present ideas relating to the addition of new transactions, modification of existing transactions and the removal of no longer needed transactions. This is all driven by the financial and corporate user community.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies (ISO member bodies).

International Standard ISO 15022 was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC68, Banking, Securities and Related Financial Services, Sub-Committee SC4, Securities and Related Financial Instruments. It replaces the previous standards for electronic messages exchanged between securities industry players, ISO 7775 - Scheme for message types and ISO 11521 - Scheme for interdepository message types.

ISO 15022 sets the principles necessary to provide the different communities of users with the tools to design message types to support their specific information flows. These tools consist of a set of syntax and message design rules, a dictionary of data fields and a catalogue for present and future messages built by the industry with the above mentioned fields and rules.

To address the evolving needs of the industry as they arise, the Data Field Dictionary and Catalogue of Messages have been kept outside the standard. They are made available by the Registration Authority which maintains them as necessary upon the request of industry participants.

To protect investments already made by the industry, the syntax proposed in this standard, referred to as "Enhanced ISO 7775 syntax", is based on the syntax used for the previous ISO 7775 and ISO 11521.

ISO 15022 has been designed to incorporate and be upwards compatible with the previous securities message standards ISO 7775 and ISO 11521, as updated in ISO TR 7775. As a result, the initial Data Field Dictionary and Catalogue of Messages accommodate ISO TR 7775 data fields and messages. However, some of the previous fields and messages are not fully compliant with the Enhanced ISO 7775 syntax. In addition the initial Data Field Dictionary incorporates the Industry Standardization for Institutional Trade Communications (ISITC) DSTU 1/1995 and the Securities Standards Advisory Board (SSAB) data dictionaries.

The ISO 15022 standard is described in the document "ISO 15022 Securities - Scheme for Messages (Data Field Dictionary), Part 1 - Data Field and Message Design Rules and Guidelines and Part 2 - Maintenance of the Data Field Dictionary and Catalogue of Messages".

Orders for ISO 15022 and other International Standards or ISO publications should be addressed to the ISO member bodies which are normally the primary sales agents in their country. For customers in countries where there is no member body, the order should be addressed to the ISO Central Secretariat.


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