Financial messaging network Swift has extended its payment exceptions and investigations (E&I) package for corporate use, with the first companies expected to go live with the technology at the end of the month.
Swift originally launched E&I in 2006 to provide a set of messaging standards to streamline management of payments-related enquiries.
The service has now been expanded for corporate use. Swift says companies and banks can use the service to exchange exceptions and investigations messages within its corporate access system Score or via the Member Administered Closed User Group (MA-CUG) scheme.
The new Exceptions and Investigations for Corporate-to-Bank service has been running in a pilot environment since the end of June and is set to go live with customers from 27 September.
Swift says over 50 financial institutions and corporates have signed up to the new service and five banks are now live.
IT services outfit NCS China is one of the first adopters of the corporate-to-bank service. Timothy Choon, director - FSI, NCS China, says: "Exceptions and investigations will have a significant and lasting impact to the financial markets' service levels. The ability to monitor and rapidly investigate exceptions with the right processes and software application will be a key differentiator."
Swift says SunGard, MSIT, Power Payments Technologies, Software AG and TAS Group all have clients in, or about to initiate, testing of the new service.