SWIFT has been running for nearly 50 years. Imagine, billions of dollars flow through this network every day worldwide, yet it still relies on the design logic of the 1970s—centralized message passing, multi-layered intermediary banks, T+2 or even longer settlement cycles. High costs, low efficiency, hidden risks—these words are not empty.

Recently, while researching on-chain payment gateways under the Plasma architecture, I suddenly thought of a question: why do people always focus on the impact of blockchain on finance when discussing it? The real core isn’t about the tokens themselves; it’s about the re-binding of payment information and value transfer. This might be the key to addressing SWIFT’s most fundamental pain points.

**What exactly is SWIFT?**

This is a point that’s easy to misunderstand. SWIFT is not a payment system; fundamentally, it’s a messaging system. When you transfer money from the US to Europe, SWIFT is only responsible for transmitting the payment instructions from Bank A to Bank B. How does the actual money flow? Through domestic settlement systems like Fedwire in the US or TARGET2 in Europe, then through a chain of intermediary banks, each passing the account back and forth, until it finally reaches your account.

This process creates several unavoidable issues:

**The first is the dislocation of information and value.** Payment instructions may reach the recipient bank in minutes, but your money might take several days. The gap during this period is where risks hide.

**The second is the stacking of intermediary links.** Each additional intermediary bank adds more costs and more risk points. This is especially unfair to small countries and small banks.

These problems do not exist in on-chain payment systems. Information transfer and value transfer happen within the same process—transparent, instant, and traceable. This is not a future concept; it’s something that can already be achieved today.