Terms and Conditions to the Business Relationship
Information on credit transfers using the SWIFT network
All data pertaining to either transfers to foreign countries as well as separately instructed express transfers is forwarded to the beneficiary's bank via the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), based in Belgium. In order to ensure system security, SWIFT temporarily stores the transaction data in its data centers in the Netherlands and USA.
Due to a lack of viable alternatives, Austrian financial institutions are currently obliged to make use of SWIFT's services for the processing of international payment transactions. A failure or refusal to cooperate with SWIFT would make it unable for an Austrian credit institution to offer global payment transactions to their clients.
SWIFT temporarily stores transaction data in both their European and their US service centers. The data stored on the servers of both service centers is continuously mirrored and is identical. This mirroring ensures the security and continuation of international payment transactions even if one of the service centers fails. A physically separate replacement infrastructure ensuring the continuation of ongoing operations complies with international standards and regulatory requirements.
Following the 11. September 2001 terrorist attacks, the US Treasury Department issued official seizure orders to the US SWIFT service center and forced the disclosure of transaction data for counter-terrorism evaluation. According to information provided by SWIFT and the US Treasury Department, an agreement has been reached limiting the quantity of data recorded by the respective seizure orders as far as possible and ensuring that the data is only used for counterterrorism purposes. The seizure of payment transaction data in the USA is presumed to be justified under US law. Government agencies in Europe are similarly entitled to confiscate transaction data if they have a corresponding legal justification.
European data protection authorities have raised concerns regarding the mirroring of payment transaction data in the US SWIFT service center, ostensibly making it fully accessible to US authorities. The Austrian banking industry supports finding an international solution to the related data protection issues.
We provide this information as mandated in accordance with the Austrian data protection authority.
If you have any further questions, we kindly request you to contact our ombudsman's office: lgt.austria@lgt.com