Money and finance make up a socioeconomic infrastructure in which trust is integral. The account form of money consists of distinct value and information components. The separate transmission of transaction information has enabled the expansion of trust in money across space. While most financial infrastructures store and transfer value, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is a critical infrastructure for infrastructures that transfers information about value as financial messages between banks and infrastructures internationally. The SWIFT financial messaging infrastructure is embedded in the organization of the same name, which is a cooperative, co-owned by member banks. SWIFT’s role as a community of practice, and features of shared infrastructure ownership, exclusivity, and cooperative governance, make it a club for banks. This club is a powerful means of engendering trust among competitor banks, allowing them to exercise joint strategic agency to maintain oligopolistic dominance. SWIFT’s predominance is tested by geopolitical and technological forces. This chapter analyses changes in response to mainly techno-organizational challenges.

Modern capitalism and globalisation rely on the free movement of capital across borders. Article 63 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union is unusual in applying not just to movement between Member States, but also to capital movements between Member States and third countries. It makes all measures which deter foreign investment unlawful, unless they can be shown to serve a public interest aim and be proportionate. Those principles have been applied to rules on land ownership, taxation and also to golden shares: a mechanism by which governments retain an influence over privatised strategic industries. That influence, because it serves the public interest and not profit, is considered by the Court of Justice likely to deter investors. The implicit view that any constraints on companies which hinder their profit-making are prima facie contrary to Article 63 is controversial. On the other hand, the Treaty also recognises the need for many restrictions on free movement of capital, to protect the cohesion of tax systems, or as part of sanctions or measures against money laundering.