SWIFT brings in Oracle after ISO20022 delays
Venerable interbank payments consortium SWIFT has brought in Oracle to help roll out SWIFT gpi cross-border payments for SMEs. The move comes after delays to SWIFT’s ISO20022 standard.
Last month, SWIFT had announced its new plan and strategy for securities processing and cross-border payments infrastructure. In August this year, AscendantFX, which is a California based cross border payments company, joined SWIFT network and the company would be using SWIFT Global Payments Initiative (gpi).
In the latest move, Oracle Financial Services said that its Oracle Banking Payments product will now support SWIFT’s belated attempt to make global cross-border payments fast, easy, predictable, and frictionless for SMEs – something which dozens of fintech startups are already doing.
Part of the S&P 500 software giant, Oracle Financial Services is a longstanding banking software provider offering solutions for retail banking, corporate banking, payments, asset management, life insurance, annuities and healthcare payers.
ISO20022 is an open standard for payments messaging which is managed by SWIFT. Back in March, SWIFT issued a press release pointing out that the company’s ISO20022 migration which was set to release in November 2021 was deferred by 12 months pushing it into 2022. An Oracle spokeswoman said it was “untrue” to suggest that the latest initiative was in any way connected with this delay.
As banks are managing their ISO20022 migrations and implementing new services within the GPI program, Oracle is aiming towards lowering the cost of ownership and customers transition by investing in its solution.
“Through collaboration with over 20 financial institutions and a number of vendors, we will enable these customers to make fast, easy, predictable and competitively priced payments all around the world via their banks,” said Carlo Palmers, Head of Payments Solutions at SWIFT.
According to the press release, banks using Oracle Banking Payments will be better able to compete against global remittance providers and card networks for low-value transfers in key currency corridors with the addition of SWIFT’s new account-to-account service for consumers and SMEs.
Earlier, Oracle and SWIFT have been working for more than 10 years and 600 banks in more than 140 countries use this collaborated technology.