Swift’s Blockchain Gamble. Can the World’s Banking Backbone Reinvent Itself?
By: Chris Maurice, CEO and co-founder of Yellow Card
For years, industry headlines have circled around the same narrative: blockchain will kill Swift. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, founded in the 1970s, has been the invisible layer behind trillions of dollars in global payments. Yet its very design - slow, costly, and dependent on intermediaries - has made it an easy target for critics and innovators alike.So the idea that Swift is finally exploring blockchain use cases shouldn’t come as a shock. In fact, it was always inevitable.
The irony is that recreating Swift’s model on-chain is almost laughably simple: slow transactions down by three days, charge $50 per transfer, and call it innovation. In that sense, blockchain doesn’t just challenge Swift;...