SWIFT pilot scheme marks cross-industry collaboration first

SWIFT is to start testing a new multi-bank standard as part of an initiative to improve the cross-border payments experience for multi-banked corporates.

The enhanced standard, designed and built in conjunction with 10 multinational corporates and 12 major banks, is designed to streamline the process for corporate treasurers by allowing them to initiate and track gpi payments to and from multiple banks in a single format, and integrate gpi flows in ERP and Treasury Management Systems.

The cross-industry collaboration – the first of its kind – tailors SWIFT’s global payments innovation (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.

Organizations participating in the pilot include Airbus, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BBVA, BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Bank, General Electric, IATA, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Société Générale, Standard Chartered Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo 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.

Having this information instantly in the corporate treasury space is what corporate customers are asking for

According to Lisa Wagner, group treasury manager at Microsoft, “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.”

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.

“Corporates want to track payments in real time and get confirmation of credit to the beneficiary’s account,” said Marc Delbaere, global head of corporates at SWIFT. “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.”

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% of payment traffic.