[en] This article explores how transaction information is a fundamental element enabling and fostering global flows of money. Financial systems, constructed around account-based money, require infrastructure, which is separated into two parts: messaging and settlement, performed via trusted agents. This separation has allowed the geographical expansion of banking, and to this day constitutes a key architecture of increasingly global networks of money. Focusing on the correspondent banking system and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, this article demonstrates the workings of this infrastructure in cross-border payments and in enacting economic sanctions. This sociotechnical infrastructure is a crucial yet overlooked area of global banking, which makes global economic and financial activity possible in the first place. Importantly, by analysing the organizational architecture of the global payments system and including the actors and agencies within it, we elucidate the (changing) relationships between data/information, geographies and power, contributing to the formation of a literature that conceptualizes financial infrastructure.
Research center :
Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research - LISER; Ghent University
Disciplines :
Human geography & demography
Author, co-author :
Robinson, Gary ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) ; Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) > Department of Urban Development and Mobility ; Ghent University > Department of Geography
Dörry, Sabine ; Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) > Department of Urban Development and Mobility
Derudder, Ben; KU Leuven > Public Governance Institute ; Ghent University > Department of Geography
External co-authors :
yes
Language :
English
Title :
Global networks of finance and information at the crossroads: correspondent banking and SWIFT
FNR11312037 - Stabilising An Unstable Industry: The Role Of Agency In Interconnecting International Financial Centres, 2016 (01/09/2017-31/12/2022) - Sabine Dörry
Name of the research project :
Stabilising an unstable industry: The role of agency in interconnecting international financial centers (FINWEBS)
Funders :
FNR - Fonds National de la Recherche [LU] Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)
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