Every major institution and system, on one map — then watch a real payment travel through it.
IMF, World Bank, BIS, the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the ECB and the world's other central banks, SWIFT, and the settlement systems and correspondent banks that do the actual work — laid out as one network, with a step-by-step simulation of a real international payment moving through it.
Scenario: a U.S. business pays a €10,000 invoice to a supplier in Frankfurt — the ordinary case where sender and receiver bank in different currencies with no direct relationship. Drag to pan, scroll or pinch to zoom, and click any node any time — not just the ones lit up mid-simulation.
Click any node in the diagram — including ones the simulation never lights up, like the IMF or the World Bank — for a plain-language explanation of its real role.
A single payment only touches a handful of these nodes. The rest are the architecture that makes the whole system possible — worth understanding even when they're not on today's path.
SWIFT is a secure messaging network linking over 11,000 banks. It's often mistaken for a payments system — it isn't one. Every settlement above happens somewhere else.
Dollars settle at the Fed via Fedwire. Euros settle at the ECB via TARGET2. Every other currency on earth follows the identical pattern with its own central bank and system.
The IMF, World Bank, and BIS never touch an individual payment — they keep the system itself solvent, coordinated, and standardized so the pattern above keeps working.
Sanctioned countries losing SWIFT access, CBDCs bypassing correspondent banks entirely, how a currency crisis changes this picture — the app covers the mechanics, the history, and the current state of every piece on this map, sourced to the IMF, World Bank, BIS, and national central banks themselves.