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SWIFT Targeting Cross Border Payments Improvement

SWIFT Targeting Cross Border Payments Improvement

(1 August 2018 - Singapore) SWIFT is testing a new multi-bank standard as part of an initiative to improve cross border payments experiences for large panel banked middle market enterprises. 

The enhanced standard, designed and built in conjunction with ten multinational corporates and twelve major banks, is designed to streamline the process for CFOs and corporate treasurers by allowing them to initiate and track global payments innovation (gpi) payments to and from multiple banks in a single format, and integrate gpi flows in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Treasury Management Systems (TMS). The reportedly first of its kind cross-industry collaboration tailors SWIFT’s gpi for multi-banked corporates by introducing a common solution delivered in the same way by all gpi banks. It will enable application providers and banks to give corporates better visibility and transparency, improving payments certainty, traceability, exception handling and allowing them to reconcile directly in their treasury operations. Pilot participants are to begin a test phase ahead of bringing this flow into production in the next few months.

Launched in early 2017, gpi already has more than 180 banks signed up, and accounts for nearly 30% of SWIFT cross-border payment traffic. More than $100bn in SWIFT gpi messages is sent every day, enabling payments to be credited to end beneficiaries within minutes – many within seconds. To date, 35 million gpi payments have been sent across 450 country corridors, in more than 100 currencies. In major corridors, such as USA-China, gpi already accounts for nearly 50 percent of payment traffic. The standard design has been developed through a series of SWIFT-led co-creation workshops with pilot banks and corporates. It supports FIN & ISO 20022 standards to allow corporates to access their payments status across SWIFT and bank proprietary channels. Organizations participating in the pilot include Airbus, BAML, BBVA, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, GE, IATA, JPMorgan, Microsoft, Société Générale, Standard Chartered and UniCredit. Together with the pilot participants SWIFT has invited leading treasury application providers to integrate the gpi flows into their own systems in order to deliver a fully embedded gpi experience in corporate treasury systems.

Marc Delbaere, global head of corporates at SWIFT commented “Corporates want to track payments in real time and get confirmation of credit to the beneficiary’s account. This new multi-bank capability will enable that experience in a consistent fashion, across multiple banks and multiple corporates. Having this information instantly in the corporate treasury space is what corporate customers are asking for.” Lisa Wagner, group treasury manager at Microsoft stated “Having this information instantly in the corporate treasury space is what corporate customers are asking for. The ability to access a greater level of payment information in a timely manner through SWIFT gpi will bring immediate benefits to our payments experience with greater transparency and responsiveness to our vendors.”

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