When SWIFT introduced the Global Payment Innovation (gpi) initiative in 2017, it initially spurred concerns around data privacy and protection, causing a sudden reluctance to use the platform. Now that we are three years out since its inception, SWIFT gpi has seen rapid adoption for cross-border payments with nearly 4,000 financial institutions and 80 market infrastructures currently enabled.[1] In fact, according to SWIFT, gpi payments worth $77 trillion were processed in 2019 alone, representing 65% of all cross-border (MT103) messages sent over SWIFT, with strong activity recently seen across domestic wholesale and retail markets.1
Allowing its users to maintain heightened levels of transparency, SWIFT gpi is a new standard through which different counterparties can send and receive funds quickly and securely between accounts anywhere in the world. With easy-to-use digital tools, all banks in the payment chain – initiators, correspondents and the ultimate beneficiaries – can view a transaction status and associated data, and make it available to the end customer without revealing any sensitive information (i.e., fields 50 and 59). This is due to the standard’s three foundational pillars that stress a commitment to transparency, efficiency and certainty:
- Every gpi payment carries a unique end-to-end transaction identifier (UETR) in the message header, allowing the payment to be traced from the sender, through the various correspondents and to the ultimate beneficiary account with no loss of information.
- The gpi Tracker, which can be easily integrated into customer channels using APIs, traces payments along their route and reports the status of messages on-demand.
- A new cross-border service level convention where participating banks commit to processing payments in tight timeframes, which are tracked and visible to their correspondents and respondents. With full visibility on fees, remittance data is passed on with no loss of information.
Transforming international payment processing as we know it, SWIFT gpi enables a faster same-day transfer of funds as opposed to earlier payments that used to take days. It also provides complete transparency of costs and fees, improves end-of-day tracking and delivers proper confirmations of credits.
Coinciding with the industry’s growing demand for transparency, firms around the world have begun integrating SWIFT gpi within their payment products as it has proven to be an efficient way to track payments, especially for larger institutions and investors who deal with an influx of payments on a daily basis. With this integration, users are provided real-time notifications and alerts, enabling them to quickly identify failed payments based on information that is extracted by the platform. Additionally, teams like Treasury and Accounting have found it to be useful to have a separate dashboard within their settlement product that possesses the ability to receive information from SWIFT APIs and display it in a user-friendly format.
By leveraging the power of automation, IVP Cash Management Solution seamlessly integrates with SWIFT to provide clients with a comprehensive and fully customizable solution for processing payments.