Realising the potential of end-to-end cross-border payments tracking

Over the past few years, the SWIFT community has been on a remarkable journey. We've taken a giant leap towards revolutionising the cross-border payments experience for thousands of banks, corporates, market infrastructures and securities players involved in sending international payments.

That revolution has ushered in an era where cross-border payments are now fast, transparent and trackable end-to-end.

Rapid adoption

For SWIFT, the driving force behind modernising cross-border payments has been SWIFT gpi.

Over a million payments every day are sent via gpi and they represent over $300 billion in daily value, in 180 currencies and across all of the major country corridors.

Last year, the SWIFT gpi community sent $40 trillion via gpi, and well over half of all payments on SWIFT are now gpi payments.

Universal confirmations

When we set out on this journey, we did so to truly transform the cross-border payments experience for all. The modern and dynamic payments system of the future should be ubiquitous: without that it won't have the reach needed to truly deliver change.

That's why by 2020, we want to unlock another key facet of the payment journey -- final confirmation of credit to the end beneficiary -- for all.

Confirmations are key for a number of reasons, but the simplest way to think about it is to apply the concept to our daily lives. For example, have you ever tracked a parcel online to check when it will be delivered? Or sent a message to a friend and checked whether it's been received?

Having the reassurance that what you've sent has arrived is part of the fabric of our everyday experience.

So it's only natural that businesses sending international payments for goods and services, often very high value, expect that experience too. Having certainty is absolutely paramount.

Easing the transition

This is no small feat, so to achieve this, we're delivering a number of solutions -- both automated and manual -- for our community to make it as easy as possible to confirm payments.

These solutions will ease the transition for banks handling thousands of payments a day, through to those handling very few.

With final confirmation of credit on all payments, cross-border transactions will be traceable from end-to-end for our whole ecosystem: from the ordering customer through to the recipient.

Join us at Sibos

Once achieved, this opens up a realm of exciting new opportunities, many of which will be under discussion at this year's Sibos, taking place in London between 23-26 September.

This year, our SWIFT at Sibos programme will dive into the key details around our plans for gpi adoption, as well of course as revealing the latest updates to our bold and exciting roadmap of new service evolutions.