Founded in Brussels in 1973, Swift is a Belgium-based banking cooperative that provides financial transaction and payment services between banks worldwide. Swift, an acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, originally connected 518 banks from 22 countries when its messaging services began to be put into use in 1977. In less than one year, Swift had processed 10 million messages between banks.

In the 1980s, Swift began connecting central banks, entered the securities market, and set up a dedicated support team to improve user experience. By the end of the decade, Swift had processed nearly 300 million messages. In the 1990s, as the world entered the Internet age, Swift continued to grow and innovate and earned the Computerworld Smithsonian Information Technology Award for its part in standardizing...