Swift to reveal European E2E payments pilot
Swift is gearing up to announce its latest end-to-end international payments pilot held across European borders.
Market sources believe that the global messaging provider, Swift, is working on a proof of concept for Europe after achieving sub-one-minute payment times in Singapore and Australia.
The formal announcement of the latest results will take place in the week of Sibos, commencing 23 September.
“Foreign exchange controls can typically take at least one day to clear,” says an industry source. “But the best players can easily do one-minute transactions when it comes to international payments.”
Swift recognises the need to work on opening hours as well as transaction speed, to ensure the payment gets from the consumer to the business in real-time. “If you want to send a payment from Australia to China after midday, you instantly have a 12-hour delay because of opening hours,” adds the source.
Traditionally, Swift observes that the international space has lagged behind the domestic space, but adds that it is time to link a fast international scheme with a fast domestic scheme for the ultimate end-to-end payments process.
However, the global provider is said to have admitted that “getting global ubiquity is not straight forward”. At least in G20, Swift predicts a holistic international payment system by 2022-3.
Looking into the future, Swift gives its opinion on the rise of cryptocurrencies.
“They go down in value like a yoyo, they’re useless and unstable. And even if crypto companies do make is stable, it’s still a basket of currencies,” says the industry source.
Looking at a case example like Libra, Swift only sees the crypto succeeding if the contract is made within Libra. Otherwise, it “doesn’t see it affecting payments short-term.”
Swift will be hosting Sibos 2019 at ExCel London from 23-26 September, where readers can enjoy our daily news print publication, Daily News at Sibos.
They should just say they are using xrp?