SWIFT stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.

Founded in 1973, it is comprised of a large network of roughly 11,000 banks from all over the world. Think of it as a messaging service for money. SWIFT member banks share information with each other about sending and receiving funds – mostly across international borders.

SWIFT operations are located in Belgium – which makes sense because of it's fairly neutral location – and is overseen by the G10 countries (psst that includes the US).