Text 1: Methods of Payment

1 There are three methods of international payment and they can be summarised as follows:

2 A telegraphic transfer (TT) involves a set of instructions sent to a correspondent bank abroad by cable, requiring that bank to pay over a sum of money to a stipulated beneficiary.

A SWIFT transfer achieves the same objective as a telegraphic transfer and uses a telegraphic means, but instead of using cables open for use by the general public a closed cable system is used.

The member banks of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) have their own computer network using direct cables between the banks concerned and a central computer base. It is thus a safer system and does not present the same problems of authentication that exist with telegraphic transfers. Authentication and verification procedures are carried out automatically. Messages are mainly coded and standardized. Security procedure ensures that no fraudulent message can enter the system nor can any message be modified during processing.

It takes less than 20 seconds to deliver a message from one bank to another if the sender and the receiver are logged-in simultaneously.

Due to the high volume of messages, the message price is much smaller than that of a telegraphic cable transmission. SWIFT transfers are now the most widely used method of payment.

3 A mail transfer again achieves the same objective as both of the previous two methods, but the instructions are sent by airmail and not by cable, hence the method is cheaper but it is of course slower.

Here is a sample SWIFT message:

§ Vocabulary notes