SWIFT Payment System Ushering in One World Currency?

SWIFT, a global bank messaging network, is seeking to go public with their new platform in the next 12-24 months that seeks to connect a variety of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) currently under development into the pre-existing financial ecosystem.

SWIFT is highly significant due to its role in global banking and now, its potential use in the creation of a one world currency.

If you thought SWIFT was going rogue, trying to push the dial in favor of CBDC, you’d be wrong. Globally, there’s been an uptick in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and not wanting to be left behind, roughly 90% of the world’s central banks are currently exploring the possibility of creating their own digital currencies.

Nigeria, Bahamas, Ukraine, Jamaica, are just a few of the nations who already have CBDCs established.

The European Central Bank also has a digital euro underway.

Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank, admitted that the purpose of CBDCs, like the digital euro, is control. An example she provided was of those who pay more than 1,000 EUR in cash for any transaction are doing so off the grid and will be fined or go to jail.

Mhmm, and that’s just the bare minimum of how extreme some are hoping to use this tool of control.

China is in the trial phase of use of an e-yuan and the Bank for International Settlements is running multiple cross-border trials. People are seeing these moves for what they really are: Wired magazine reported that “China’s Digital Yuan Works Just Like Cash—With Added Surveillance,” Forbes wrote an article with the headline: “China’s Digital Yuan Reported To Be the Ultimate Financial Censorship Tool,” whilst Representative Mike Flood told reporters that “The Chinese Communist Party’s move to use government-run digital currency to impose further control on its people and its economy is a cautionary tale that America must avoid.”

So what exactly is a CBDC, you may be asking? A CBDC is a digital form of a country’s national currency issued by its central bank. Unlike traditional physical money such as banknotes and coins, CBDCs exist in electronic or digital form.

According to Nick Kerigan, head of SWIFT’s innovation, the company’s latest trial involved a 38-member group of central banks, commercial banks and settlement platforms which was one of the largest global collaborations on CBDCs and “tokenised” assets ever.

“We are looking at a roadmap to productize (launch as a product) in the next 12-24 months,” Kerigan said. “It’s moving out of the experimental stage towards something that is becoming a reality.”

What is SWIFT doing? They’re working to ensure different countries’ CBDCs can all be used together despite differences in foundational technologies. SWIFT’s innovation also makes way for the possible automation of highly complex trade or foreign exchange payments.

One country in particular isn’t on board, however, and is moving away from making financial transactions through SWIFT and any other Western payment systems and that country is Russia.

In his promotion of digital financial settlements in Russia and her allied nations, CEO of VTB Bank, Andrey Kostin, said digital banking will create sovereignty.

Why would Russia and her allies support digital financial settlements? Because, they would help bring an end to the dollar’s dominance and that is, in part, why the Bank of Russia is working heartily to achieve this goal.

“SWIFT has announced plans to carry out digital payments soon, but we need to kill SWIFT in our settlements, we need to completely get away from it and involve our partners in this as well,” Kostin states.

Several countries were forced to halt transactions with Russia, as well as cease accepting their Mir payment cards after U.S. sanctions were put in place.

Perspective

The rise of digital currencies have been painted as “the way of the future,” but do they aid in the creation of the type of future we actually want?

Fact of the matter is, we don’t NEED digital currencies to be the “way of the future” and if they are indeed, just another means of control and a limitation of our freedoms, then do we even want them?

Sure, they may make life simpler in the immediate but at what cost?

A one world system of governance requires everyone to be beholden to the same laws and we all know that everything is tied to finance.

Governments are working towards their own individual CBDCs and many of the nations who are doing so have a history, both past and present, that love control. So is it any wonder, then, that SWIFT is trying to usher in a means of making a global system in which all CBDCs are able to be used with one another?

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