SWIFT international settlement system was established in 1973, and its headquarters is in Brussels, Belgium. Its main function is to transfer settlement information between global banking systems. SWIFT International Settlement System is a cooperative institution of the same organization, in which both China and Russia are directors, but the United States theoretically has the right to kick a country out of the institution.

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The International Capital Settlement System (SWIFT) is managed by SWIFT. The use of SWIFT provides a safe, reliable, fast, standardized and automated communication service for bank settlement, thus greatly improving the settlement speed of banks. As the format of SWIFT is standardized, the format of letter of credit is mainly in SWIFT messages.

SWIFT letter of credit refers to any letter of credit opened or notified through SWIFT system. In international trade settlement, SWIFT letter of credit is a formal, legal and international letter of credit.

The adoption of SWIFT letter of credit must comply with the provisions of SWIFT, the code name (Tag) specified in the SWIFT manual must be used, and the letter of credit must follow the provisions of the Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Letters of Credit revised by the International Chamber of Commerce in 2007.

Since 1987, non-bank financial institutions including brokers, investment companies, securities companies and stock exchanges have started to use SWIFT. This network has spread over more than 8,000 financial institutions in 206 countries and regions around the world, providing secure message transmission services and related interface software for the financial industry and supporting real-time payment and settlement systems in more than 80 countries and regions.

1980 SWIFT connects to Hong Kong. Bank of China joined SWIFT on 1983, and was a member bank of 1034 organized by SWIFT. It was officially opened in May of 1985, which became an important milestone for China to meet international financial standards. After that, commercial banks and stock exchanges in China, Shanghai and Shenzhen also joined SWIFT.

In the SWIFT message, some items are required fields and some are optional fields. Required items are required items, such as 3 1d due date and place, and optional items are additional items, which may not be available in every letter of credit, such as 39B maximum credit line.

Lower and lower speed. For the same content, the cost of SWIFT is only about 18% of that of telex and only about 2.5% of that of telegram. Higher SWIFT encryption is more reliable, confidential and automated than telex encryption.