https://www.scmp.com/rss/522235/feed The latest news and top stories on Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). A prominent Belgium-based global member-owned cooperative, SWIFT is dedicated to providing a secure network for financial institutions to exchange information about transactions. Its main areas of focus include secure financial messaging, developing international standards like ISO 20022, and facilitating cross-border payments. Established in 1973, SWIFT is a crucial part of the international... en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Letters Letters Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at letters@scmp.com or filling in this Google form. Submissions should not exceed 400 words. In 2009, six years after the US invaded Iraq and rewrote its economy, China and Russia (not American companies like ExxonMobil) won Iraq’s most lucrative oil contracts. The United States paid for the invasion; rivals collected the prize. That outcome is likely to have shaped... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/letters/article/3350146/iran-war-not-just-short-term-energy-disruption?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/letters/article/3350146/iran-war-not-just-short-term-energy-disruption?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 16 Apr 2026 03:30:10 +0000 Aileen Chuang Aileen Chuang Ant International, HSBC and Swift have successfully tested cross-border transfers of tokenised deposits using an international financial messaging standard, in a move that could streamline global blockchain-based payments and corporate treasury management. The milestone, announced on Thursday, marked the first case leveraging the Swift network and ISO 20022 as a messaging standard in cross-border payments using tokenised deposits. The standard is a universal language for exchanging electronic... https://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/3336068/swift-pilots-blockchain-payments-ant-international-and-hsbc-cross-border-test?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/3336068/swift-pilots-blockchain-payments-ant-international-and-hsbc-cross-border-test?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 11 Dec 2025 10:00:22 +0000 Peiman Salehi Peiman Salehi For much of the modern era, power was easy to recognise. It belonged to the states that could win wars decisively, enforce sanctions effectively and impose political outcomes far beyond their borders. That definition no longer works. The world is moving towards what scholars have described as a form of “distributed multipolarity”, a landscape in which no single actor – not the United States, not China, not Russia – can fully shape events in the way great powers once expected. Tools once seen as... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3335006/welcome-world-where-wars-dont-end-and-sanctions-dont-work?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3335006/welcome-world-where-wars-dont-end-and-sanctions-dont-work?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 05 Dec 2025 21:30:09 +0000 Xinmei Shen,Zhou Xin Xinmei Shen,Zhou Xin Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun says he is trying to establish the Tron blockchain, which he founded and launched in 2018, as the virtual asset industry’s answer to Swift – the main messaging network used by the global banking system – on the back of a surge in stablecoin transactions around the world. “I estimate that our facilitated transactions will exceed Swift’s in the next five years,” Sun, 35, said in an interview with the South China Morning Post. He added that the transaction... https://www.scmp.com/tech/blockchain/article/3323759/justin-sun-eyes-swift-system-virtual-asset-sector-praises-hong-kong-crypto-progress?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/tech/blockchain/article/3323759/justin-sun-eyes-swift-system-virtual-asset-sector-praises-hong-kong-crypto-progress?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 31 Aug 2025 04:00:09 +0000 Sylvia Ma Sylvia Ma In the decade since China shocked the world with a surprise devaluation of the yuan, the nation’s exchange-rate regime has steadily shifted towards market-based – yet still managed – pricing, and analysts say the era of burning through massive reserves to defend the currency is firmly in the rear-view mirror. Armed with lessons from the past, Beijing now employs a wider arsenal of tools to manage volatility, they added, with the key challenge for the coming decade being whether the yuan can open... https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3321464/10-years-day-chinas-big-yuan-devaluation-set-shock-waves-what-has-changed?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3321464/10-years-day-chinas-big-yuan-devaluation-set-shock-waves-what-has-changed?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 11 Aug 2025 13:00:08 +0000 Mohammad Taha Ali Mohammad Taha Ali As China moves to accelerate global use of the digital yuan, particularly in cross-border trade along Belt and Road Initiative countries, the push is being interpreted as part of Beijing’s broader ambition to rewire the architecture of global finance. With international finance increasingly fragmented amid trade wars and sanctions, Chinese officials argue that dollar-based systems backed by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) are vulnerable to... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3317401/china-pushes-digital-yuan-diplomacy-amid-global-souths-dollar-dismay?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3317401/china-pushes-digital-yuan-diplomacy-amid-global-souths-dollar-dismay?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 09 Jul 2025 08:30:07 +0000