SWIFT (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is a company created in the 70s in Belgium (in Hulpe) between several banks to organize, standardize, reassure, automate and accelerate the transmission of messages between banks.

The Banque de Crédit de Bujumbura is the first one in Burundi to have adhered to this organization, indeed, it is September 6th, 1996 when it signed the contract linking it with SWIFT.

Organize
As in any organization which respects itself, the banks who decide to use SWIFT have to subscribe to a contract asking them to respect rules and very strict standards.

Standardize
It seems part of the customs but quite a lot of things were standardized by the organization ISO (International Standard Organization) at instigation of banks founders of SWIFT (as Belgolaise) We can quote the currencies codes(EUR, USD, CHF, GBP, BIF, RWF, …), the country codes which you find in number of domains(BI = Burundi, FR = France, BE = Belgique, etc.), the banking codes, the account numbers, and other many little things which are a part at the moment of our every day life and which we do not see any more.

Securize
Messages passed on between banks have to remain very confidential. The security is very important and considered inviolable. To be able to pass on a message authenticated between two banks, they have first of all to exchange of security keys (BKE).These keys are of use at the same time to the encoding of messages and to its authentification. They also have to use a software approved by SWIFT. This software will also watch that messages respect the standards foreseen by SWIFT.

Automatise
The high standardization of the codes and the messages facts that the treatment of these messages (however in emission or in reception) is easily automatisable. All the banking softwares deserving of this name foresee this automation, it is the case of our software Delta-Bank from whose editor received the certification of SWIFT.

Accelerate
The sending of money or quite other piece of information as fast as possible has its importance. As example to handle and send an operation of Burundi towards Europe or the United States, it was necessary by mail, hardly 40 years ago, 2 weeks at least. With the telex and certain standards these durations were reduced to one day, but with the SWIFT it is matter of some seconds.

All the banks who want to work in the international finance are practically constrained to be a part of SWIFT. It represents approximately 90.000 banks in the world.