Financial Sanctions, SWIFT, and the Architecture of the International Payments System

A Modern Economic Statecraft Framework

“…Some states can use economic statecraft techniques to affect these international flows of information (and often money) resources that flow via SWIFT. For example, if the EU (the origin) uses an economic statecraft technique like a sanction on institutions that provide financial messaging services to certain states, firms or individuals (destinations), then SWIFT (which is subject to Belgian and EU law) is incentivised to disconnect the destination states, firms or individuals from its messaging system (Cipriani, 2023). Depending on enforcement and other methods for sending these flows, this technique is likely to reduce flows of information (and money) resources between the destination(s), origin and other states that use SWIFT.…”