SWIFT Turns to DLT for Cross-border Trade Payments

To support the growing demand amongst trade ecosystems for secure and reliable settlement, SWIFT has launched a proof of concept (PoC) to trial a new gateway to interlink trade and e-commerce platforms with SWIFT gpi.

The gpi Link will seamlessly connect multiple trade platforms to gpi members, enabling gpi payment initiation, end-to-end payment tracking, payer authentication and credit confirmation.

SWIFT says the gateway will also allow the continuous monitoring and control of payment flows and the subsequent movement of goods by those trade platforms.
To ensure global integration and interoperability, it will support APIs, as well as SWIFT and ISO standards.

The first stage of the PoC will work on R3’s blockchain platform, Corda, to bring the benefits of gpi payments – speed, ubiquity and certainty – to distributed ledger technology (DLT)-enabled trade. The PoC addresses the need for e-commerce and trade ecosystems to be supported by global, fast, secure and transparent settlement using fiat currencies by enabling ‘off-ledger’ payment settlement based on gpi.

In the PoC, corporates using the R3 platform will be able to:

  • Authorise payments from their banks via gpi Link.
  • Settle gpi payments through their bank.
  • Receive credit confirmations on the respective trade platforms via gpi Link on completion.

While the PoC initially addresses R3’s DLT-based trade environment, it will be extended to support other DLT, non-DLT and e-commerce trade platforms.