How SWIFT Became America’s Quiet Empire & Why India Must Build The EXIT

• Who truly controls global trade — the nations that ‘produce and consume,’ or the systems that merely ‘record’ the transactions?
   
• When two sovereign countries ‘trade’ with each other, who watches, who ‘profits,’ and who ‘decides’ the rules mid-game?
   
• Is monetary infrastructure ‘neutral technology,’ or is it ‘geopolitical power’ disguised as plumbing?
   
• And if ‘financial sovereignty’ is the ‘new frontier of independence,’ why is India still renting the pipes instead of owning them?

For decades, the world has been told a comforting story: that the global financial system is rules-based, neutral, and efficient. At the heart of this system sits SWIFT—the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. Officially, SWIFT is “just” a messaging platform. It does not move money; it transmits instructions. That technicality has been repeated so often that it has become doctrine.

Yet doctrines deserve scrutiny. And when scrutinized, SWIFT looks less like neutral plumbing and more like an invisible toll booth on global trade — one that quietly advantages the United States economically, strategically, and informationally.

The Commission ‘Nobody’ Talks About

Every cross-border transaction routed through SWIFT generates fees — paid by banks, embedded in transaction costs, and ultimately borne by nations and businesses. Individually small, collectively enormous. With trillions of dollars flowing annually through SWIFT rails, this system has created a perpetual annuity tied to global trade itself.

While SWIFT is headquartered in Belgium, its operational dependence on US-aligned financial institutions and compliance with US regulations effectively places it under American influence. The US does not merely benefit incidentally; it benefits structurally. Trade between India and Africa, Russia and Europe, or Southeast Asia and Latin America still passes through a system aligned with Washington’s monetary architecture.

In simple terms: even when America is not a party to the trade, it still earns from the transaction.

That is not free trade. That is rent-seeking at planetary scale.

Surveillance by ‘Design,’ Not ‘Accident’

More troubling than fees is visibility. SWIFT messages carry granular information: who is trading with whom, in what currency, for what amount, and at what frequency. This data is not abstract. It is strategic intelligence.

Over the years, it has become clear that US authorities have had access — direct or indirect — to SWIFT data flows, particularly under post-9/11 financial surveillance regimes. The justification has always been security. The consequence has been asymmetry.

When one country can see global trade patterns in near real time, it gains the ability to anticipate supply chains, pressure counterparties, pre-empt alliances, and weaponize sanctions with surgical precision. Economic coercion becomes frictionless.

Sanctions, once blunt instruments, have become precision tools because the map already exists.

This is not merely a violation of transactional privacy between sovereign nations. It is a structural imbalance baked into the global order.

Monetary Control as Modern Colonialism

Empires once controlled sea routes. Today, they control settlement systems. The US dollar’s dominance, combined with SWIFT’s ubiquity, has allowed Washington to enforce its foreign policy through monetary choke points. Countries can be excluded, frozen, delayed, or intimidated — not through warships, but through compliance notices.

Ask Iran. Ask Russia. Ask Venezuela.

Russia’s response was SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) — a domestic alternative developed after repeated threats of SWIFT exclusion. China built CIPS (Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System) to reduce dependence on dollar-centric rails and facilitate yuan-denominated trade.

These systems exist because no serious power can afford to outsource its monetary nervous system. Which raises an uncomfortable question: why hasn’t India done the same, at scale, for the world?

India’s Moment to ‘Re-Architect’ the Order

India already has the raw ingredients. A robust digital public infrastructure. A globally admired real-time payments system. A reputation as a non-coercive power. And credibility across the Global South.

What India lacks is ambition proportional to its civilizational confidence.

Imagine an Indian-led global financial messaging and settlement platform — sovereign, transparent, and voluntary. A system where countries can trade directly with each other. No commissions on trade value. No hidden surveillance. No unilateral sanctions masquerading as compliance.

Such a platform would not replace SWIFT overnight. It would coexist. But coexistence itself would break monopoly power.

India could offer this system as a public good, much like it has done with digital identity and payments domestically. Participation would be optional. Governance would be multilateral. Data sovereignty would be guaranteed. This would not be anti-American. It would be post-hegemonic.

From ‘Rule-Taker’ to ‘Rule-Writer’

The irony is hard to miss. A civilization that once connected the world through trade routes, trust networks, and ethical commerce now depends on a system that monetizes and monitors every handshake.

India speaks often of ‘Vishwaguru.’ This is what that actually looks like, not speeches, but systems.

A fair financial architecture does not punish trade. It facilitates it. It does not spy by default. It earns trust by design. The next global order will not be decided only by armies or GDP tables. It will be decided by who builds the rails that others must ride.

The question is no longer whether the SWIFT-centric system is unfair. That debate is over. The question is whether India will merely critique the architecture, or finally redesign it.

And when future historians write about the decline of invisible empires, will India be listed as a passive user of someone else’s pipes, or as the ‘architect of a new, dignified, and truly multipolar financial order’?

• Who controls trade without trading?
• Who profits without producing?
• And who will have the courage to build a system where sovereignty is ‘not a permission’ but a ‘default’?