"The SWIFT system is a way for banks and financial institutions to communicate with each other to manage cross-border payments," says Erin Lockwood, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine. "It's part of the infrastructure of global finance. Sometimes it gets conflated with global payments systems, but it's not the actual channel through which capital flows. It's more akin to a secure messaging service."⁠

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