Tim Hartford’s excellent column on the @FT this summer on IT innovation “What we get wrong about technology” https://www.ft.com/content/32c31874-610b-11e7-8814-0ac7eb84e5f1 begins with an ominous paragraph: “Forget flying cars or humanoid robots. The most disruptive inventions are often cheap, simple and easy to overlook”. So much can be said about the UETR, SWIFT gpi’s (universally) Unique End-to-End Reference, when considering financial transactions. For starters, the UETR in itself is cheap to produce: the references can be generated by anyone, without need for a central issuance authority. The specification for the UETR is based on a well-known Internet standard ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier ) so if you want one you can just go to https://www.uuidgenerator.net/version4 or use the appropriate function if coding in many modern languages. Even tried and tested mainframe technology can churn out a UETR when “persuaded” the right way. A ...