The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift), legally S.W.I.F.T. SC, is a cooperative established in 1973 in Belgium and owned by the banks and other member firms that use its service. SWIFT provides the main messaging network through which international payments are initiated. It also sells software and services to financial institutions, mostly for use on its proprietary "SWIFTNet", and assigns ISO 9362 Business Identifier Codes (BICs), popularly known as "Swift codes".
