SWIFT has announced a global payments innovation initiative to dramatically improve the customer experience in correspondent banking by increasing the speed, transparency and predictability of cross-border payments.
The initiative was designed in collaboration with the industry and will initially focus on a business-to-business payments service supported by participating banks. SWIFT is looking to implement the initiative in early 2016.
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SWIFT hopes that this will help corporates grow their international business, improve supplier relationships and achieve greater treasury efficiencies through features such as same day use of funds, transparency and predictability of fees, end-to-end payments tracking as well as transfer of rich payment information.
It will operate on SWIFT’s platform and participation will be open to any supervised financial institution that is a SWIFT member.
SWIFT CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt said: "Correspondent banking serves the industry with millions of secure cross-border payments day in and day out. With the global payments innovation initiative, we are enabling banks to provide distinctive cross-border payments services and providing real benefits to end customers. This is a critical step in cross-border payments innovation."
SWIFT chairman Yawar Shah added: "This global payments innovation initiative is a reflection of the strength of the SWIFT community and its ability to collaborate and innovate as well as deliver a new benchmark in cross-border payments."
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By GlobalDataFollowing the pilot aimed at serving corporates, SWIFT aims to incorporate additional innovations. It will also deploy new technologies and work together with the industry to define additional service level agreements that will cater to other client groups.
Head of banking markets at SWIFT, Wim Raymaekers, says that the initiative is an important first step in driving cross-border payments innovation. He also added that SWIFT will continue to "develop new and enhanced services, utilising SWIFT’s Innotribe initiative to further engage the fintech community and explore the application of innovations such as real-time payment status tracking, peer-to-peer messaging and blockchain technology".
