Bank Wire

What Is a Bank Wire?

A bank wire is an electronic message system that allows major banks to communicate various actions or occurrences regarding client accounts. The wire represents a secure computerized messaging system that sends account information, notifications, and transaction requests between banks.

Understanding Bank Wires

Bank wires are the mechanism for bank-to-bank transactions, allowing banks to communicate with each other. While the bank wire does not affect actual transfer payments, such as a wire transfer, it will provide the financial institutions with knowledge of such events. For example, the purpose of a bank wire would be to notify a bank if a client has deposited funds into its account.

Bank Wire vs. Wire Transfer

In contrast with the bank wire, a wire transfer is an electronic transfer of funds across a network, which a global group of hundreds of banks administers. In particular, wire transfers can help people in different geographic locations safely transfer money to one another. During a wire transfer, no physical money is exchanged between banks or financial institutions; instead, banks pass information among one other regarding who the recipient is, what her bank account number is, and how much money she is receiving.

International bank account numbers (IBAN numbers) help in the identification of the correct financial institutions in complex bank wire transfers. A wire sender first pays for the transaction at his bank. Then, the recipient's bank all necessary information from the initiating bank and deposits its reserve funds into the recipient's account.

Bank Wires and Security

Cybersecurity threats are increasing with more online financial services, such as bank wires and wire transfers. Threats to a computer system are classified by the method used to attack. Three common types of cyberattacks include backdoor, denial-of-service, and direct access attacks.

Backdoor attacks exploit alternate methods of accessing a system. Most often, the backdoor does not require usual authentication methods. Some systems come with these backdoors by design, while others result from software errors. With a denial-of-service attack, the account user is prevented from accessing a system. A common method of denial-of-service attacks is entering a wrong password enough times that the account is locked. Meanwhile, direct-access attacks gain access to a system and copy its information or modify the system entirely. These strikes include bugs and viruses often inadvertently download by the user.

While any individual system is vulnerable to cyber attacks, larger entities, such as major commercial banks, along with other large businesses (e.g., Fortune 500 companies that deal with consumer data), along with government agencies and systems, are often key targets. That being said, bank wires and wire transfers themselves are safe ways to transfer money (given you're not being scammed).