SWIFT To Create New Cross-Border Real-Time Rails

SWIFT, a global provider of secure financial messaging services, announced Wednesday (Sept. 16) that its cross-border platform will be retooled to enable financial institutions to deliver instant transactions.

Over the next two years, the Belgium-based cooperative said the initiative will provide transaction management services. The new approach promises to create new value-added services to support business growth.

SWIFT said its platform will improve interactions between financial institutions, optimize speed and provide transparency and predictability from one account to another anywhere.

The move has the potential to provide instant transactions between 4 billion accounts serviced by financial institutions across SWIFT’s network, the company added.

Dubbed the next-generation digital platform, it is expected to use an application programming interface API, a computing interface which defines interactions between multiple software intermediaries, and cloud technology to provide common processing services.

“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,” said Javier Pérez-Tasso, SWIFT’s CEO, in a statement. “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.”

SWIFT said the planned platform will leverage its reach across more than 11,000 institutions in 200 countries.

Last month, AscendantFX Capital, a Toronto-based cross-border payments provider, joined the SWIFT network.

By using its Global Payment Initiative (GPI), the company said it hopes to access better API capabilities and improve its aPay platform. Using GPI means payments can go through in seconds, potentially, with better tracking potential.

Ascendant also hopes to see a reduced number of payment investigations and to also cut down the time it takes to resolve them, the company added.

The firm said its customers and partner-led innovation groups have wanted more tracking of payments for some time, and Ascendant is also making its data accessible to customers via aPay and its API solution, aPay Link.

“We are always looking to provide our customers greater clarity into the payment journey,” AscendantFX Chief Operating Officer Shemina Jiwani said in a statement. “We plan to use the data SWIFT GPI provides to route payments in the most effective, efficient way possible.”