Despite the article being clear as most commenters don’t read them anyway and considering the amount of non sense I have been reading on HN concerning SWIFT inc

Despite the article being clear as most commenters don’t read them anyway and considering the amount of non sense I have been reading on HN concerning SWIFT including in this very thread, I think some precisions are needed: - SWIFT is not American. It’s a cooperative headquartered and was funded in Belgium. - SWIFT is lead by a 25 members board of directors. No country can have more than two members on the board. - SWIFT is messaging system. It’s used to pass orders and it archives them. It is not involved in own these orders are settled. SWIFT is a telex replacement. - SWIFT is useful because banks have automation in place to directly process SWIFT formatted messages. It is important because banking institutions are slow moving and conservative. From a strictly technical point of view, doing what SWIFT does outside of SWIFT is extremely easy. It’s all IP based and the messaging format is standardised. - If you read articles about the impact of being disconnected from SWIFT, you will often see the case of Iran being used as an exemple. That’s garbage. Iran was hit by US sanctions threatening repercussions on anyone doing business with them using dollars. The figure quoted is not really due to them being cast out of the SWIFT network. - CIPS actually uses the same exchange format as SWIFT but on a different network. It’s a good showcase of how easy to do it is.