International banks endorse SWIFT’s transaction management platform
SWIFT’s much delayed transaction management platform got the endorsement from six global banks namely Citi, Bank of New York Mellon, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered and Bank of China. Delayed by more than a year from its initial launch date, banks hope to use the platform to enable new services, improve efficiency and reduce costs when it finally goes live in November 2022.
The said banks have confirmed their preparation for the platform as the co-operative detailed an ambitious roadmap it will roll out over the next 18 months. New features in the platform include upfront validation of beneficiary details, central management of exceptions, an extension of SWIFT’s high-speed gpi rails to lower-value payments and new rich data services based on the ISO 20022 standard, as noted in the announcement.
SWIFT in its press note said that this platform builds on ‘extensive work by the SWIFT community in the past five years to transform cross-border payments’. The new capabilities and enhancement which SWIFT is building will take these ‘to the next level while ensuring interoperability with new payment types, technologies and services’ and further ‘innovation and enable exciting new solutions to end customers along with an improved cross-border experience’.
“SWIFT’s platform strategy helps provide the industry with a clear path towards a ubiquitous instant and frictionless cross-border payments experience”, said Manish Kohli, Global Head of Payments and Receivables, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi. While Paul Camp, CEO of Treasury Services, Bank of New York Mellon said, “SWIFT has unique assets including both global and domestic reach via connectivity to financial institutions around the world, expansive data and unparalleled resiliency”.
This news comes as SWIFT last year debuted gpi payments and David Watson, Chief strategy officer at SWIFT then noted that “This is an important milestone in our strategic ambition to help banks meet growing global demand for instant and frictionless cross-border payments”.