Real-World International Money Transfer Flow

The diagram above shows the basic process of international money transfers:

• Blue represents the originating country, green represents intermediary institutions/organizations, and yellow represents the receiving country.

• Solid boxes represent transaction flow.

• Dotted/Dashed boxes represent funds flow.

From the funds flow perspective, the funds move from the originating country to intermediary institutions and then to the receiving country. Here, we only consider the accounting changes, not the actual asset settlement. In fact, for a long time, actual asset settlement is not required because, theoretically, as long as the time frame is long enough and the transactions are non-aggressive, actual asset settlement is never needed (assets will infinitely approach balance, i.e., the net funds difference between the originating and receiving countries will be zero).