Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) said that European Parliament has formally adopted the EU-US Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) agreement following political agreement with the Council of Ministers on June 24, 2010.
Swift added that the agreement has anti-terrorist finance tracking provisions that will apply for financial messaging data held in Europe by international providers operating in the EU and the US.
The program is set to enter into force on August 1, 2010. Swift will work with the authorities, under the agreement’s new legal framework, to support operational implementation of the protections envisaged.
Lazaro Campos, CEO of Swift, said: “Protection of our customer data has been and remains Swift’s top priority. Our safeguards are globally recognized as best practice and we welcome the fact that these have been taken into account. They include limiting the scope of data requests to anti-terrorism purposes only, segregating data to a secure environment, and auditing every justification for data searches.”
Swift is a member-owned cooperative that provides the communications platform, products and services to connect more than 9,400 banking organisations, securities institutions and corporate customers in 209 countries.