Swift has set out plans to help financial institutions streamline the cross-border payments experience for their corporate customers, by extending ISO 20022 across the entire payment chain and giving banks ready-to-use, white-labelled tracking services that can be activated for customers at the click of a button.
In what marks a significant milestone in delivering its strategy for instant and frictionless transactions, Swift will enable financial institutions to capture rich data at source, by standardising the payment end-to-end with ISO 20022. Swift will also help banks offer their customers ready-made and white-labelled payment tracking services by API or messaging channel, giving complete transparency on a payment’s status as well as confirmation of its receipt. Currently, corporate payments are complicated by competing standards and proprietary formats, while multi-banked corporates face a fragmented landscape as they interact with a multitude of banking providers with varying features and services.
Swift’s plan was developed with a working group of 25 leading cash management banks and 20 sector-leading corporates, including Roche and Saudi Aramco. The goal is to introduce a universal standard that can maximise the benefit of ISO 20022’s richer, more structured data, facilitating automation and reconciliation and drastically reducing integration costs.
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The standardisation of payment tracking data will enable financial institutions to easily offer the same experience across their corporate customer base, regardless of their own geographical reach or local investment. Currently, where multi-banked corporates receive tracking information, it comes through different channels and in different formats.
Roche, the global pharmaceutical company, has successfully implemented Swift’s new corporate API channel, with a key banking partner enabling their direct access to tracking information for payments they send and receive.
Stefan Windisch, Global Head, InHouse Bank at Roche, said: “Swift’s new approach undoubtedly offers significant benefits from a corporate client perspective. It enables us to enhance and accelerate our payments analysis, giving us a comprehensive overview at pace. Having direct API access to Swift’s payment tracking system will provide us with more transparency and strengthen our ability to analyse overall payment performance. It will allow us to refine our instructions, better identify inefficiencies, and minimise erosion of value in cross-border payments.”
Swift has been driving the industry towards meeting the G20’s goals for cross-border payments. – 89% of payments on its network now reach the beneficiary bank within an hour, ahead of the G20’s target of 75% settling in the end account within an hour by 2027.
Thierry Chilosi, Chief Strategy Officer at Swift, said: “Adoption of ISO 20022 provides a unique opportunity to improve cross-border payments. Capturing rich data at source will enhance the entire ecosystem, driving us closer to our goals of instant and frictionless transactions. We’re delighted to be making it easy for our community to extend the benefits to their customers while simplifying and standardising access to services, such as tracking, which are so important to efficient corporate treasury.”
Many members of Swift’s working group are implementing and piloting the new capabilities, and Swift intends to extend them to its wider community later this year.
Damien Godderis, Head of Payments Industry Engagement at BNP Paribas, said: “BNP Paribas are delighted to be working with Swift to offer a bank agnostic solution for payment initiation to maximise the benefits of ISO 20022, and to offer self-service payment tracking. We’re excited to start testing along with our corporate clients.”
Noritoshi Murakami, MD, Head of Transaction Banking Division (Products) at MUFG, said: “We are delighted to have been able to collaborate with Swift and our peers from across the industry, as well as a large number of businesses, to enhance the customer experience for our multinational corporate clients. This will help simplify their treasury processes and improve the cross-border payments ecosystem overall.”
Boris Lipiainen, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Kyriba, said: “We are pleased to be working alongside Swift and many others for this pilot programme. By utilising a single standard for payment initiation in ISO 20022 and enabling direct corporate access to tracker data, we are able to integrate additional services that improve the payment experience for multibank clients across the payment lifecycle. Together with Swift, we are able to reduce friction, streamline operations, and increase value for our customers.”
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