SWIFT has announced the launch of a new digital platform, as well as a new strategy, for instant payments.
International transfers developed by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication have always been much slower and more expensive than domestic transfers, so much so that they have recently begun to face competition from Ripple in terms of speed and cost-effectiveness.
This competition is actually forcing SWIFT to adapt to technological innovation, so much so that it is now building a new generation digital platform in the name of resilience and security.
In addition, the new strategy aims to enable account to account transactions anywhere in the world, immediately and without friction, with transparency and end-to-end predictability.
SWIFT changes payments
All this will take place in the coming years, with the aim of radically transforming payments and transaction processing into securities, reorganizing its transnational infrastructure within this new strategy.
The SWIFT cooperative will also expand its activities beyond its current financial messaging activities so that it can offer comprehensive transaction management services.
The new platform will manage interactions between financial institutions and other participants to minimize friction and optimize speed while providing end-to-end transparency and predictability. The potential is to support instant transactions between at least 4 billion accounts worldwide.
It will also use APIs and cloud technology to combine a variety of management, processing and control services in which banks have historically invested independently. This should also lead to savings in terms of time and costs.
The CEO of SWIFT, Javier Pérez-Tasso, said:
“We are innovating the underlying infrastructure that financial institutions use to make transactions run even faster end-to-end, and at the same time further reducing costs for the community through industry-shared services in the areas of cyber, fraud and compliance. We will introduce data innovation that embeds risk and control elements expected from SWIFT, creating peace of mind for business-critical operations. Combining these elements, we are creating a broad platform with faster technology and smarter and better services that the industry can trust as a foundation for innovation towards their own end-clients.”
The Head of Global Transaction Banking of Intesa Sanpaolo, Stefano Favale, commented:
“We are very pleased with how SWIFT is working to make the payments experience easier and more frictionless. In this way, our core business will be ready for the challenges of the future, while remaining competitive with new rivals by reducing risks and simplifying operational efficiencies. And the crucial factor is allowing us to dedicate our resources to what we care about most – creating real value for our customers”.
According to SWIFT Chairman Yawar Shah, the cooperative will radically transform the way payments and securities transactions are processed over the next two years. In addition, SWIFT will continue to serve the banks and market infrastructure in line with its mission.
