Swift’s global payments initiative gets boost from 73 banks
Wim Raymaekers, Swift
Swift has revealed 73 banks worldwide have now joined its global payments initiative for cross-border payments.
The latest to join are Alfa-Bank, Axis Bank, Banco de Crédito del Peru, Banco do Brasil, Bangkok Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, Banque Européenne d’investissement, CaixaBank, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Credit Agricole, CTBC Bank, E.Sun Commercial Bank, Fifth Third Bank, ICICI Bank, Itaù Unibanco, Mashreq Bank, Promsvyazbank, Rabobank, Svenska Handelsbanken, Swedbank, TMB Bank and US Bank.
Wim Raymaekers, global head of banking market and project lead for this initiative at Swift, says: “Together, they do nearly 75% of all cross-border payments on the Swift network.” He is encouraging more banks to join.
As a part of the venture, Swift says banks will “enhance their approach” to cross-border payments and follow a set of “strict” business rules designed by Swift in collaboration with participating banks.
These banks will be able to give their corporate clients the same day use of funds, transparency of fees, end-to-end tracking, and transfer of payment information.
To enable the end-to-end tracking, Swift is developing a database that it will host in the cloud, to give end-to-end visibility on the status of a payment transaction, from the moment it is sent until it is confirmed – which Swift says is similar to tracking services provided by international shipping companies.
Raymaekers adds: “For the first time, banks will be able to give their customers precise information about their payments, in real-time, including confirmation of credit to beneficiary’s account.”
The first phase of the initiative is underway with a pilot focused on business-to-business (B2B) payments. Early results from the pilot will be presented at Sibos, Swift’s annual financial services event, in September 2016, with the go-live planned for early 2017.
