(SWIFT, La Hulpe, Belgium, www.swift.com) An industry cooperative that provides a standard format for transmitting payments, stock transactions, letters of credit and other financial messages to more than 7,500 member banks, broker-dealers and investment organizations around the world. Founded in 1973 as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, millions of transactions worth several trillions of dollars are sent each day with an average transit time of 20 seconds. Working like a bank routing number, a SWIFT code is widely used to transfer funds between banks.