WANT TO BUY Looking to buy a company with SWIFT

If you have a legitimate need for a SWIFT membership and code, why not just become a member? It's a pretty quick process.

tomboy said:

It used to be "quick" but it’s no longer the case. It requires few years of audited financials and takes a very long time to get

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Not saying you're wrong, but that hasn't been my experience lately. Startup technology providers and startup financial service providers are able to become SWIFT members — without showing years of audited financials. AFAIK, you just sign up online, go through a sales and onboarding process, and then you're in.

What do you need the SWIFT membership for? Do you need a BIC?

Buying a financial institution is quite complicated and can easily take years if you require regulatory approval. There are some non-financial companies (technology providers) with SWIFT membership but there are so few of them that you may have a hard time finding acquisition targets.

daniels27 said:

How much is the joining and yearly fee with SWIFT?

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It depends on type of membership, what services you need from SWIFT, and how they are deployed (hosted, managed, on-premise). IIRC, the most basic is something like 20–40,000 EUR joining and 10–20,000 EUR/year. That gives you access to the BIC registry, not to sending messages. And I don't think it's the complete BIC registry. There are layers within layers.

It's been about a year or two since I last saw a price list first hand, though.

daniels27 said:

How much is the fee for sending one payment and how much to receive the same?

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Different pricing models for different uses and services. As I recall, SWIFT often makes you pay for a bulk of transaction, so even if you only send/receive one payment, you'd be paying for a block of 10,000 or 100,000 or millions of transactions.

Not all payments are the same. Different types carry different costs and message length can affect how much you pay. That's why some banks will only allow short messages/references and others seemingly have no limit.

All in all, sending an average cross-border (non-SEPA) transaction via SWIFT can cost anywhere from a few cents to a couple of EUR/USD.