Currency swaps are not a trading strategy that are used very often by retail forex traders.

Most of the time they are either used by international companies that need to take principal delivery of a certain amount of foreign currency for a specified period of time in order to conduct business, or they are used by banks in a manner similar to carry trades or eurodollar sweeps in order to take advantage of higher interest rates.

Currency swap contracts are not required to appear on a company's balance sheets, and they can be negotiated for a period anywhere from one night to ten years. Currency swaps were introduced by the World Bank in 1981 to obtain Swiss francs and German marks by exchanging cash flows with IBM. This deal was brokered by Salomon Brothers with a notional amount of $210 million dollars and a term of over ten years.