Revolut, the banking app, released this very interesting article about how money moves around the world. At least it's very interesting to me and I can see why there is a liquidity problem in traditional money transfers around the world.
https://blog.revolut.com/how-your-money-moves-around-the-world/
It makes a lot more sense when you look at the gifs, however here's my interpretation.
It talks about how bank transfers work in the following scenarios:
Intra-bank transfers 🏦
Update 2 records, debit account A & credit account B
Inter-bank transfers (where there is a relationship) 🏦🏦
2 banks would have accounts with each other e.g. Lloyds would have a Barclays account & vice versa
When A (Barclays) transfers money to B (Lloyds);
Within Barclays - account A would be debited and and Lloyd's account would be credited
Within Lloyds - account B would be credited
Inter-bank transfers (with intermediary) 🏦➡️🏦
2 banks would be reserves with an intermediary (e.g. Central Bank)
When A (Bank 1) transfers money to B (Bank 2);
Account A would be debited by Bank 1
Bank 1 account to be debited within intermediary
Bank 2 account to be credited within intermediary
Account B would be credited by Bank 2