IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-3-031-26482-5_17.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Telegraph to Tether: Challenges in the Global Payments System and the Struggle between Private and Public Interests

In: Fault Lines After COVID-19

Author

Listed:
  • Catherine R. Schenk

    (University of Oxford)

Abstract

Cross-border payments systems are fundamental to the smooth operation of the global economy, but they have attracted relatively little public or academic interest. To support trade and commerce, the system needs to be fast, efficient, inclusive and transparent but these characteristics are challenged by long transaction chains, fragmentation and complexity, legacy technology and high compliance costs. The geopolitical importance was highlighted by the exclusion of Russia from Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) in 2022. This chapter examines the changing technology and the origins of two key institutions (SWIFT and Clearing House Interbank Payments System in New York, or CHIPS) with special focus on the private ownership of this public good. It draws on new archive evidence from central banks, commercial banks and multilateral institutions to offer fresh insights into how the global payments system has evolved.

Suggested Citation

  • Catherine R. Schenk, 2023. "Telegraph to Tether: Challenges in the Global Payments System and the Struggle between Private and Public Interests," Springer Books, in: Robert Z. Aliber & Már Gudmundsson & Gylfi Zoega (ed.), Fault Lines After COVID-19, pages 279-302, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-26482-5_17
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-26482-5_17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-26482-5_17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.