Powering Payments: Enhancing
Cross-Border Payments & Sibos 2023
·
Cross-border payments on Swift exceed the G20’s
Processing Speed Target
·
At
present only 60% of wholesale payments reach customer accounts in that
timeframe due to delays at the beneficiary leg caused by issues including
regulatory controls, batch processing and opening hours of market
infrastructures.
In
2020, the G20 announced several goals to enhance the speed, cost, transparency,
choice and access of cross-border payments. Today, we’re pleased to announce that
we’ve made strong progress towards these goals, with 89% of transactions processed
on our network reaching recipient banks within an hour.
That’s
already well ahead of speed targets set by the Financial Stability Board to achieve
one-hour processing for 75% of international payments by 2027. The momentum underscores
our work to expedite delivery and enable banks to offer a better service to their
end-customers. It also challenges misperceptions that payments are often required
to travel through chains of intermediary banks to their final destination. Data
from our network shows that 84% of all payments on the network are conducted directly
or with a single intermediary.
While
in-flight processing between originating and beneficiary banks has significantly
accelerated, there is still more to be done at industry level to fully achieve the
bar set by the G20. At present only 60% of wholesale payments reach customer accounts
in that timeframe due to delays at the beneficiary leg caused by issues including
regulatory controls, batch processing and opening hours of market infrastructures.
“Our
strategy to transform cross-border payments is delivering tangible results. Swift
already exceeds the G20 target on speed for processing on our own network, and we
are well on track towards meeting the other targets,” said Thierry Chilosi, Chief Strategy Officer at Swift.
“The
G20 roadmap to enhance international payments recognises the critical role these
transactions play in the growth of the global economy – and how necessary industry-wide
collaboration is to achieving tangible improvements. Swift will continue to work
closely with the financial community to meet these targets and foster a more inclusive
global economy built upon the seamless movement of value across the world.”
There’s
more to come
In
addition to helping the financial services industry meet the G20’s target for speed
through services like Payment Pre-validation and Swift GPI. Swift continues to support
industry efforts to address other challenges identified by the G20:
Transparency
Swift
GPI has transformed cross-border payment transparency with the end-to-end visibility
it offers on transactions. We’re also investing in the low-value cross-border payments
space with Swift Go – helping banks offer a fast, predictable and competitively
priced solution to their consumer and SME customers. Meanwhile, Swift Securities
View is enabling end-to-end tracking of securities transactions, preventing the
costly challenge of settlement fails.
Cost
We
know that friction can cost the industry and slow payments down and are working
to reduce the impact it has on our industry. To do this, we’re improving our data,
interoperability and screening services and constantly evolving Payment Pre-validation.
This API-based solution removes millions of costs to the industry around failed
transactions and improves the cross-border experience.
Choice
and access
We’re
opening up new ways for our community to access the capabilities we offer, including
cloud and API-based connectivity options both for messaging and full-transaction
services, powered by our new Transaction Manager
As
new payment means and models to connect to instant payment systems emerge, securing
interoperability between domestic or network-based ‘digital islands’ is becoming
more important. To help our community meet the G20 targets, we’ll continue to focus
on addressing fragmentation head-on. Whether that’s by collaborating with central
banks to develop an interlinking solution for CBDCs, or by working with market infrastructures
to enhance settlement models.