Regarding the SWIFT example, transactions between banks across countries go through SWIFT’s infrastructure and are encrypted for regulatory and security reasons

Regarding the SWIFT example, transactions between banks across countries go through SWIFT’s infrastructure and are encrypted for regulatory and security reasons. Banks and financial institutions operating at this scale are also required to use HSMs (Hardware Security Modules) to meet security and compliance standards, ensuring that sensitive data is processed securely. Suggesting alternative approaches to such large corporations is not straightforward. Their IT and security teams cannot afford to risk handling sensitive financial data in plaintext. No manager would readily approve a solution that offers additional functionality at the cost of deviating, even slightly, from well-established compliance practices. Encryption is therefore fundamental to how these systems operate. The challenge arises when these institutions need to perform computations or checks on such encrypted data. Decrypting the data, even under controlled conditions and with trained personnel, is operationally complex, introduces additional risk, and can create a significant compliance burden. This is where FHE offers a compelling solution. We demonstrate how a check can be performed directly on encrypted transactions against a known blacklist, without requiring the underlying transaction data to be decrypted. P.S. It is great to work with Marc :)