Standard Chartered has opened a public portal through which clients can track the status of payments messages as they are transmitted over the Swift network.
Similar to tracking the delivery of parcels, Standard Chartered’s clients and their counterparties can check the status of any payments the Bank has processed in real-time, by simply entering Swift’s unique end-to-end transaction reference (UETR) associated with the cross-border payment on the public portal.
The ability to track cross-border payments over the bank-to-bank network is a key feature of Swift's Global Payments Innovation (gpi) initiative. By the end of 2020, all financial institutions on Swift will be required to confirm payments to the tracker programme.
Standard Chartered was one of 12 member institutions and 10 multi-national corporates to participate in pilot trials of the service back in July 2018. It now claims to be the first bank to introduce a public platform to track payment status, well ahead of the November 2020 payments confirmation mandate.
Lisa Robins, global head of transaction banking at Standard Chartered, comments: “Corporations and financial institutions around the world rely on the confirmation of payments to facilitate the movement of goods and services in order to support the healthy growth of supply chains. Given our longstanding history of supporting trade flows across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, we are continuously looking at ways to enhance the trust and dependability of cross-border payments.”