SWIFT indicates that flow of new business onto its Swift Go payments service has tripled to more than 500 banks over 120 countries during 2022.
This solution aims to deliver speed and transparency to payments of up to US$10,000, enabling users to send USD, GBP and EUR cross-border with a breakdown of how much it will cost them in payment fees and other deductions before they execute the transfer.
SWIFT intends to expand the range of currencies supported by this service as more banks join this payments community.
More broadly, SWIFT indicates that it has made important advances over the past 12 months in helping to fulfil the G20 objectives of greater speed, transparency, choice and access in cross-border transactions, while delivering these goals at lower cost.
The Brussels-based financial messaging and solutions provider highlights that nearly half of transactions over the SWIFT network now arrive within five minutes and two-thirds reach end beneficiaries within 60 minutes. This is moving closer to the G20 target of settling 75 per cent of transactions within one hour.
It aims to strip out costs across the trade lifecycle, supporting this goal through enhancements to its prevalidation service which verifies account information against more than four billion accounts in its database to identify errors in payment instructions before they are executed.
SWIFT’s Securities View solution, piloted during 2022, is designed to enhance transparency across the securities transaction lifecycle in a bid to reduce settlement fails. This service will go live during 2023.
In October, SWIFT supported a trial that demonstrated how central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and tokenised assets can be exchanged across distributed ledger technology and fiat currency infrastructure. This CBDC solution is now in testing with 18 central and commercial banks around the world.
Commenting on this initiative, SWIFT says: “Swift’s innovation proved that ‘digital islands across the world can be connected, realising the technology’s full potential to enable instant and frictionless payments and securities transactions.”
During 2022, SWIFT also declared that it will allow users to connect to its messaging network and applications through public cloud service providers including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
Swift chief strategy officer says: “Swift and its community have made tremendous progress in 2022 transforming not only the cross-border experience of today — but setting the pace of innovation for tomorrow.
“We are getting ready for a world where value is transferred in many ways and forms around the world, and Swift’s focus on inclusivity and interoperability promises to increase the efficiency and reduce the risk of these exchanges.”
