SWIFT Reaches Message Milestone

FIN message traffic peaked at an all-time high of 9,685,754 million messages on 30 September 2003, according to SWIFT. More than one million of the messages were sent over SWIFTNet. This is an 8.82 per cent increase from the last peak day reached on 1 July 2003 with 8,900,991 messages. FIN traffic year-to-date is ahead of plan with 1.5 billion messages, representing a 12.4 per cent growth in volume. Reflecting the current economic environment, the drivers for this traffic increase are payments reporting messages and treasury messages, particularly MT 300 Foreign Exchange Confirmation. Year-to-date, treasury market growth is strong at 15 per cent. Messages sent via SWIFT per day have tripled in volume over the past seven years, up from three million in 1996 to nine million messages per day in 2003. FIN message traffic reached a record 1.8 billion messages in 2002 growing by 18.5 per cent over the previous year due in large part to the launch of major payments market infrastructures NewCHAPS in the UK and RTGSPLUS in Germany.