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PAYMENTS

International transfers

Connects the payment systems of different countries so money crosses borders.

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Its role in the system

The bridges between national payment systems. There is no single global RTGS, so money crosses borders along a chain of banks that hold accounts with one another, and they agree with each other through SWIFT messages. This link serves foreign trade, investment, currency deals and migrants' transfers home — and is at the same time the main instrument of financial sanctions.

Functions

  1. Correspondent accounts — a bank opens an account at a foreign bank in that bank's currency: for itself this is a "nostro" (our account with them), for the partner it is a "vostro" (their account with us). Through a chain of such accounts a dollar or a euro travels from a bank in Poland to a bank in Brazil.
  2. Exchange of payment messages — 🌍 SWIFT is the network through which banks pass the instructions "to whom, how much, for what". SWIFT neither transfers nor holds money: it only delivers the message, and the funds move on the banks' accounts.
  3. The single euro payments area — 🇪🇺 SEPA: a euro transfer between 41 countries under common rules, at the price and speed of a domestic one.
  4. Personal remittances — operators such as Western Union and MoneyGram, fintechs and banks deliver migrants' earnings to their families; for many countries this is one of the main sources of foreign currency.
  5. The sanctions and AML filter — every international payment is screened, participants and route alike, against sanctions lists and signs of money laundering.
  6. 🇨🇳 China: a rail of its own for the yuan — the CIPS system lets member banks settle in yuan directly instead of going through a chain of dollar correspondents. Members are split into direct participants (about two hundred, holding accounts in the system) and indirect ones (more than fifteen hundred, which come in through a direct member); the reach is close to 190 countries. Even so, CIPS still carries the messages for most of those payments over SWIFT, and the yuan's share of international payments stays at a few per cent against roughly half for the dollar.

What makes it special

  • How it earns: transfer fees, charges for maintaining correspondent accounts and — often the main one — the mark-up on the exchange rate. That is why a "no-fee transfer" can be expensive through the rate.
  • Trust and de-risking: a correspondent bank answers for the customers of its bank customer. After large fines for sanctions breaches, international banks closed accounts en masse for banks from risky regions — and whole countries lost direct access to the dollar.
  • Who regulates: SWIFT is a Belgian cooperative overseen by the National Bank of Belgium together with the G10 central banks; the participating banks are regulated by their own countries. SEPA's rules are written by 🇪🇺 the European Payments Council (EPC) alongside EU legislation.
  • The timing gap risk: if one side of a currency deal has already paid and the other has not, a bankruptcy in between costs the full amount. That is what 🌍 CLS was created for — settling both currencies at the same moment (payment versus payment).
  • Reform: 🌍 the G20 set targets for 2027 — cheaper, faster and more transparent international payments (on the FSB's 2025 assessment most of them will not be met by that date); from November 2025 SWIFT moved international payment instructions fully onto the ISO 20022 standard, and 🇪🇺 SEPA moved onto instant transfers.
  • 🇸🇬 Singapore: connect what already works: rather than building a new global system, the idea here is to stitch national instant payment systems together. Since February 2023 Singapore's PayNow has been linked to 🇮🇳 India's UPI, so a cross-border transfer by phone number takes seconds. The next step is the Nexus scheme: instead of a separate deal with every country, a system connects once to a shared hub. It is run by the non-profit Nexus Global Payments, incorporated in Singapore, whose founders are the central banks of India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand (2025), joined by Indonesia in 2026.

Why it matters

A bank or a country cut off from international payments effectively drops out of world trade: it cannot pay for imports, receive export proceeds or service its debt. That is why this link is both a target for cyberattacks and a weapon of sanctions.

🇪🇺 Russian banks cut off from SWIFT, March 2022

after the full-scale invasion the EU banned the provision of financial messaging services to seven Russian banks (VTB and VEB among them); SWIFT disconnected them from 12 March 2022, and the list was later extended. The episode showed that a node that "merely passes messages" can cut a bank off from world settlement.

🇧🇩 The Bangladesh Bank heist, February 2016

hackers linked to North Korea stole the SWIFT credentials of the central bank of Bangladesh and sent around three dozen forged instructions for almost a billion dollars from its account at the New York Fed. Most were stopped, but about 81 million dollars went out through Philippine casinos; after that SWIFT introduced its mandatory Customer Security Programme.

🇩🇪 Bankhaus Herstatt, 1974

the German regulator closed the bank in the middle of the working day: it had already received marks from its counterparties but had not yet paid the dollars in New York. The partners lost the full amounts of the deals — the risk was named "Herstatt risk", and three decades later CLS was launched to remove it.

Links to other zones · 10

  • Anti-Money LaunderingSanctions and Anti-Money Laundering rules bite on International transfers through payment filtering; disconnecting a bank from SWIFT is a decision of governments, not of SWIFT itself.
  • Banking & Credit InstitutionsInternational transfers run on Banking & Credit Institutions: banks own the correspondent accounts and the SWIFT membership, and corporate transaction banking earns its money exactly here.
  • Card networksFor a tourist or an online shopper, International transfers happen through a card rather than a correspondent payment; the cross-border leg between the two banks is closed afterwards by Card networks.
  • Corporations & Corporate FinanceInternational transfers carry the heaviest load from Corporations & Corporate Finance: paying for imports, collecting export revenue and cross-border cash pooling.
  • Crypto / CBDCInternational transfers face a challenger in Crypto / CBDC, where stablecoins and settlement networks such as Ripple present themselves as a cheaper route than the correspondent chain.
  • Digital paymentsA new generation of Digital payments — Wise and providers like it — is taking the retail end of International transfers away from correspondent banks by showing the rate and the fee upfront.
  • FX marketEvery FX market deal ends in two International transfers, and Herstatt risk is removed by CLS.
  • Households & IndividualsInternational transfers carry migrant remittances, a noticeable source of income for Households & Individuals across many developing countries.
  • Interbank systemsInternational transfers end in the Interbank systems of the issuing country — Fedwire for the dollar, T2 for the euro — while SWIFT and correspondent banks are only the bridge between them.
  • Technology & InfrastructureInternational transfers are above all an exchange of messages, which puts Technology & Infrastructure in charge: the SWIFT move to ISO 20022, automated sanctions screening and protection of a bank's access to the network.

Regulation and supervision

Supervised by: Anti-Money Laundering

The riskiest channel: money crosses borders and legal systems. Money transfer firms must be licensed or registered and must vet customers and agents, while correspondent banks must know who their partner bank serves (🌍 FATF R.13, R.14, R.16; 🇺🇸 OFAC and FinCEN, 🇪🇺 AMLR).

Standards: FATF Recommendations 13, 14, 16 · EU Transfer of Funds Regulation 2023/1113 · EU AMLR 2024/1624 · US Bank Secrecy Act (MSB registration) · Wolfsberg Correspondent Banking Principles

Careers in this zone · 6

Correspondent banking specialist (FI relationship manager)

Opens and maintains the bank's accounts at foreign banks and foreign banks' accounts at their own: negotiates terms, limits and tariffs, assembles and defends the due diligence pack. When a large correspondent wants to close an account because of country risk, this is the person who explains why the bank is sound and finds alternative routes.

What you need to know

  • The mechanics of nostro/vostro and correspondent chains
  • Due diligence on respondent banks: Wolfsberg questionnaires, bank KYC
  • Sanctions regimes of the key currencies (🇺🇸 OFAC, 🇪🇺 the EU)
  • Transaction banking products: payments, trade finance, foreign exchange

Skills

  • International negotiation in English
  • Preparing convincing KYC packs
  • Building long-term relationships with foreign banks
  • Assessing country and counterparty risk

Certifications: CAMS (ACAMS) is valued; beyond that, experience and a network of contacts decide

Nostro account and reconciliation manager

Reconciles the bank's records against correspondents' statements every day, resolves discrepancies and makes sure every nostro account holds enough currency — no more and no less than needed. A surplus is frozen money; a shortfall means clients' payments fail.

What you need to know

  • Nostro/vostro accounting, camt.053/MT940 statements
  • Forecasting currency flows
  • The operating hours of RTGS systems in different currencies and time zones
  • The basics of the currency market and swaps for funding

Skills

  • Working with automated reconciliation systems
  • Excel / SQL
  • Meticulousness and discipline every day
  • Fast investigation of discrepancies

Certifications: Usually not required — payment operations experience is enough

International payment investigations specialist

Hunts for "lost" payments along the chain of banks: why the money did not arrive, where it was held up, who took a fee. Raises enquiries with correspondents, handles returns and recalls, and works through payments stopped by sanctions filters together with compliance.

What you need to know

  • SWIFT routing, gpi tracking, ISO 20022 messages
  • Charge rules (OUR / SHA / BEN)
  • Procedures for returning and recalling payments
  • Typical reasons for blocks: sanctions, incomplete payer data

Skills

  • Detective thinking
  • Business correspondence in English
  • Working with a client under stress
  • Precision with payment details

Certifications: Usually not required; Swift's training courses are useful

Payment sanctions screening analyst

Works through filter hits on payments: is the beneficiary really a person on a sanctions list, or just a name match; is there a hidden route through a third country. Tunes the filter's rules so that it catches what is risky without stopping thousands of clean payments.

What you need to know

  • Sanctions lists and regimes: 🇺🇸 OFAC, 🇪🇺 the EU, 🇬🇧 OFSI, 🌍 the UN
  • Sanctions evasion schemes and the stripping of payment data
  • The structure of payment messages
  • The logic and configuration of screening systems

Skills

  • Analysis of false positives
  • Open-source research on companies and vessels
  • Well-reasoned decisions under time pressure
  • Clear documentation

Certifications: CGSS — the ACAMS sanctions certificate; CAMS

Remittance corridor manager

At a transfer operator or fintech, is responsible for specific routes — the United States to Mexico, say: partners at both ends, the rate and the fee, delivery speed, licences and risks. Looks for the balance between the price the migrant sees and the cost of liquidity and compliance.

What you need to know

  • The business model of transfers: fee, exchange rate margin, cost of funding
  • Licensing of payment institutions and agent networks
  • AML risks of cash and agent-based transfers
  • The G20 and UN targets on the cost of remittances

Skills

  • Unit economics and pricing
  • Negotiating with partner banks
  • Competitor analysis by corridor
  • Cross-functional coordination

Certifications: Not required

SEPA / cross-border payment scheme manager

Makes sure the bank complies with the SEPA schemes and international standards: instant transfers, verification of payee, new message versions. Represents the bank in working groups and turns the decisions of regulators and the EPC into a change plan inside the bank.

What you need to know

  • The SEPA schemes: credit transfer, instant transfer, direct debit
  • The EU instant payments regulation and verification of payee
  • The requirements for a country to join SEPA
  • ISO 20022 and the G20 roadmap

Skills

  • Reading and interpreting scheme rulebooks
  • Change project management
  • Presentations for management
  • Working in industry groups

Certifications: Not required; participation in industry associations and project experience are valued

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