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International Electronic Funds Transfer System: Swift And Its Interface With The New Payments Code, Thomas J. Karl

Penn State International Law Review

Increase in international trade and travel in recent years has increased the volume of international payments, most of which have traditionally been handled by commercial banks. Because paper provided the legal basis for these transactions, they were carried out via fairly complicated documents transmitted by mail. When the sums involved were very large or the time factor particularly important, Telex was used to expedite the procedure.

These factors compelled the banking world to develop a computerized international transfer system. The desired system would facilitate processing international transactions through (1) a high degree of standardization in the types of documents, procedures, …