Author | Xia Xinyue
Produced by | Discovery Finance
SWIFT is the Association for Financial Telecommunication in Global Banks. The concept will not be repeated, in simple terms, it is the financial institutions that send messages when making cross-border payments - it does not touch funds, does not transfer funds, but a channel to transmit information in a standard message format, "passing a message", "sending a message" and "keeping an account" between banks.
At present, SWIFT's member units cover more than 200 countries and regions around the world, with more than 11,000 member units, and the daily information processed by the system (that is, the number of messages) exceeds 42 million. If you look at the SWIFT group so big, if anyone is not in this group, it is difficult to communicate efficiently when doing cross-border transactions, which will affect cross-border settlement, thus affecting cross-border trade - so everyone calls it a "financial nuclear bomb".
SWIFT has been blocking Russia for many days, and the following "Discovery Finance" has come to chat with you about a few related issues.
Swift Who has the final say?
And
To say that the original intention of SWIFT was to be a neutral organization that is not affected by politics and government interference, that is, a non-profit organization that "transmits" and "keeps accounts" for international payment participants, and also protects the trade secrets of the words that have been passed on, and makes a neutral information channel.
Therefore, neutrality, security, standardization, and compliance are the major pursuits of SWIFT. It was initially initiated by six European international banks and has since been largely supervised by the Central Bank of the Group of Ten (G10).
However, where there are people, there are interests, and where there are interests, there are rivers and lakes.
It's no wonder that many people around us have long mistakenly believed that SWIFT is an American institution. Why this misunderstanding, because empirically speaking, SWIFT seems to be helping the United States sanction their sworn enemies every time, such as in 2012 and 2018, when the United States wants to fight terrorism, Iran was twice removed from swift group chats; for example, this time, Russia was removed from SWIFT group chats.
You say that the SWIFT headquarters is located in Belgium, so it is subject to Belgian and EUROPEAN Union laws, not the United States.
You talk about equity, SWIFT shareholders are actually particularly dispersed, the number of up to more than 3500, the United States does not account for much of them.
So who has the final say on SWIFT? Looking at its board of directors, you will find that of the 25 directors, 20 are actually European or American, and the remaining 5 are from China, Japan, Russia, Singapore, and South Africa.
In other words, the 20 people from Europe and the United States formed the loudest voice and number of votes.
But are the opinions and votes of Europe and the United States necessarily the same? This is a very interesting place, because they will also play a game of interests. A past event is worth recalling: as early as 2014, when Russia engaged in the Crimea incident, the United States wanted to block Russia with SWIFT, but it did not get the consent of those European countries.
Because blocking Russia, affecting Russia's business with the world, also means influencing Russia to do business with Europe. Russia's big business everyone also understands, the most important thing is to export oil and natural gas, and European countries are the main importers, energy imports from Russia account for 39.5% of eu energy imports, Germany, Italy's natural gas dependence on Russia is more than 50%, and Germany's 55% of natural gas needs to be imported from Russia.
These are also the origins of "Nord Stream II", which is why in the past few years, despite repeated obstructions by the United States, Nord Stream construction has been stubbornly and silently insisting, until this time it has encountered a big obstacle.
The so-called wounded enemy is a thousand, and europe's self-inflicted losses are also a few hundred.
However, this time, the situation has become more complicated, after all, Russia is really at war, and anti-war is the common humanity of people all over the world, which has become the legitimacy of public opinion among European and American politicians.
Although under this, the background of Interests in Europe and the United States is actually not the same, but overall, this time it is more convergent than the last time, so unlike in 2014, SWIFT has started to block Russia - but if you pay attention to the wording of the report, you will find that it is only the "some banks" in Russia, that is, several major banks, not all; it does not say how long it has been blocked. (Author's note: Before SWIFT blocked Iran, it was also aimed at some banks.) ）
Well, that is, not doing things so desperately.
Quit the group chat, then private chat?
To be honest, private chat is not impossible, but it is really inconvenient.
It's like you're blocked by Tencent, although you can also send mobile phone text messages, or rely on the chat function of alipay, DingTalk and other software, but the most versatile and concentrated communication scene for everyone is really in WeChat QQ.
Unless, one day, Tencent kicked more and more big guys, hey, then these people are gathered in Alipay, maybe they can force the chat function on Alipay to become mainstream and popular? (Cough, this is an analogy to SWIFT kicking people, not in the PK of a treasure a letter of the APP Oh, don't think too much about it.) ）
Let's go back to reality, for example. Russia has an alternative system called SPFS, which is built by their family, but mainly to solve the flow of financial information in their country. Externally, I estimate that it is still hanging, "Yujian Finance" checked some information, saying that only 23 foreign banks are connected to the SPFS system.
Anyway, you can understand that when the power was cut off, a few candles were found.
As for the international financial information circulation, our media love to boast about China's CIPS system, which is China's RMB cross-border payment system, which is a major weapon. At present, the RMB cross-border payment system consists of "CIPS + SWIFT", but the point is drawn: SWIFT here is optional rather than mandatory.
In addition, it is also necessary to pay attention to the magic of the euro cross-border payment system: the INSTEX system.
After SWIFT sanctions blackened Iran in 2018, the EUROPEAN Union launched the INSTEX system in 2019, which was built by the major countries in Britain, France and Germany. The timing of the launch of this system is quite illustrative, and the main business involves cross-border settlement information services for Iran's humanitarian field.
Therefore, INSTEX, from birth, has the ability to bypass or circumvent SWIFT, and unlike SWIFT, it is denominated in the euro. INSTEX's approach is to put it in layman's terms as "two-end rolling difference", bartering.
Say a simple model. For example, Iranian buyers bought 50 million euros of goods from EU sellers, ANDSTEX made a 50 million euro statistic here; then EU buyers purchased 50 million euros of goods from Iranian sellers, such as oil, then INVESTEX made another 50 million euros of statistics. The exchange of the above two information is equivalent to the difference between the two places themselves, and the buyers on the EU side will give money to the EU sellers through the bank, and the same is true for the Iranian side. In this process, the euro is the denominated currency of the transaction, not the actual cross-border payment circulation currency, the principle is a bit like currency swaps, cross-border flow is only the commodities on the market.
So INSTEX cleverly avoided SWIFT, theoretically helping EU companies with deal needs evade U.S. sanctions. (Although, in reality, the United States is quite long-armed.) ）
(Here Xiaobian no longer has a headless note on the previous sentence, we are also very smart, there is a strategic vest bank, called Kunlun Bank.) This story will have the opportunity to say slowly ha later... ）
However, under the glare of the United States, INSTEX is not big, EU companies are still under pressure from the United States, global trade is still subject to dollar hegemony, especially many banks, do not dare to touch this business. This makes INSTEX a small amount of expedient for several years.
Although there is no winner in war, the economic account has always been the weak eating the strong, and the strong win.
Clicking "Watching" or forwarding is your best reward for us
Yu Ji pillow side reading listen to the wind financial jianghu