Cross-border payments have long been a pain point for corporate treasurers. Thankfully, SWIFT’s - Global Payment Innovation (GPI) initiative looks set to change that.
True that a number of FinTech organisations have launched projects to improve cross-border payments. Nevertheless, SWIFT’s network also has an unparalleled reach, and this will be vital to the success of GPI. How & Why? Though it has a number of core components, there are three parts that are of great interest and use to the corporate user.
Firstly, a tracker. If you send a parcel by FedEx or UPS, then you can go online and track exactly where it is up until the delivery. Well, until now, you couldn’t do that when you sent a cross-border payment, but with Swift’s GPI tracker, banks can now track their payments. Visibility and transparency issues are resolved as it provides real-time status on where a payment is. It’ll also tell you at every link in the payment chain how much fees has been deducted off the principal amount, exchange rates applied on a payment and how long it took to process that payment and this runs all the way across the payment chain until it gets to the beneficiary.
Secondly, a directory. In the directory, you can go in and look for any bank, by bank information - see what currencies they process, cut-off times for those currencies and what paths those currencies are going to go through. This helps you to decide a path for your cross border payment as you have rich data.
Lastly, the observer. There’s a whole set of SLA’s and rules around GPI. What observer the does is allow you to review the adherence of SLA’s and rules that other banks are providing. For example - are the payments processed on the same day upon receipt? Is the information transparent? Are they passing through the end-to-end tracking number aka UETR?
Over 150 banks worldwide have already adopted SWIFT GPI – including the major transaction banks, which means a large proportion of the banking community is already using SWIFT GPI.
Where does your bank stand? And if you are using SWIFT GPI are you truly benefiting from it?
With the right team on hand, there is very little that you need to do in order to benefit from SWIFT’s GPI initiative. We have worked with transactional conglomerates like HSBC and delivered unparalleled solutions. So if you want to know more about SWIFT GPI or you want to know how you can help your treasury team benefit through faster, more efficient, cross-border payments, get in touch with us.
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