5 ms·

SWIFT is a messaging system, not a settlement system. Its also far slower than blockchain, more complex, and more prone to error. I think around 6% of transac

• twic 8y ago
  I'd be interested to see actual numbers for transaction volume, latency, and reliability of SWIFT and blockchain in practical use cases. I worked on a payment system using the UK's Faster Payment Scheme a while ago. The SLA for latency is two seconds end-to-end, and is usually much faster than that, was simple enough for a gang of underpaid COBOL programmers to implement it successfully, and didn't have a mechanical error rate worth bothering about. In January it moved 186.1 million payments and 161 billion pounds: http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/statistics http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/statistics FPS is UK-only, but there's nothing about the technology or the commercial and legal machinery that wouldn't work internationally. If SWIFT is really as bad as you say, it could be replaced with a better instance of the same technology; it doesn't require a haunted git repository to fix it.
  • Skunkleton 8y ago
    > it doesn't require a haunted git repository to fix it. lol, thanks for that.
  • zubairq 8y ago
    I used to work for SWIFT. The 6% error rate is incorrect as errors are detected and resent using different methods, so more like 0.0001% error rate. Sometimes SWIFT transfers trillions of dollars in a single day, so yes, it is the largest trading volume in the world
• Lazlo_Nibble 8y ago
  In 15+ years of building and maintaining SWIFT-connected systems that run SWIFT-provided software, I’ve never encountered a situation where a SWIFT message has “just disappeared”.
• Pamar 8y ago
  "Citation needed" for the 6% figure.