SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is an industry-owned cooperative providing messaging services to banks, broker-dealers and investment managers as well as to market infrastructures in payments, treasury, securities, and trade.

This brief is provided as quick reference of SWIFT messages syntax. WIFE models SWIFT using the concepts of Blocks and Tags covered by this document. Please refer to the SWIFT User Handbook for complete and accurate information of the standard.

SWIFT message processing services enables financial institutions to exchange financial data worldwide, securely, rapidly and reliably.

It processes information - data, text, or commands - in the form of messages. A message may consist of one or more headers containing reference information, a body, which contains the message text, and one or more trailers, which are added for control purposes.

When a message is received by the service, the text is checked for conformity with mandatory standards, and is rejected if not acceptable, thus ensuring a processable message for the intended recipient. To convert the message to the output form, a new header (or headers) is constructed and any necessary trailers are added.