i) being in a very bad situation?
j) an important company or person with a lot of power or influence?
Task 2. Reading
SWIFT and banks
SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications
is a non-profit making bank-owned cooperative society. It was set up in Brussels in
1973.
SWIFT is a service organisation which processes and transmits banking
transactions electronically between member banks on all the five continents.
Electronic systems transfer large sums around
the world quickly and
effectively. In this way a new type of international banking is being established.
But payment procedures in international trade still rely heavily on paper-
based documents. And specialists say that one day all the data of invoices, shipping
documents, various receipts and other documents will
be provided in computer
form instead. No paper documents will be used any longer. All the information will
be sent.
Very often papers in banking, like invoices,
bills of collection, bills of
exchange, drafts, promissory notes, letters of credit, letters of guarantee and many
others specify different amounts of money. The currency can be stated in different
ways, either in words, or by the ISO code, or
by an old symbol, for example:
1. one hundred and thirty six thousand English pounds - can be written as:
GBP 136,000.00 or £ 136,000.00
One can easily find the ISO code of each currency in a special publication of
the International Standard Organization. Operation people of a bank often use the
ISO codes. If they do not remember this or that code they can easily refer to the
ISO publication which they usually have ready at hand.
