- Swift sent to work with Fast and Secure Transfers Network to beat record times scored elsewhere
- More tests set to take place in other countries and markets such as Europe
- ”The successful testing across multiple corridors between Europe and North America to Asia Pacific confirms the important role that gpi Instant will play in making that bold vision a reality”, says senior Swift representative
A leading name in the online money transfer space has announced that it will work with Singapore’s domestic payment system to cut the time involved in cross-border payments.
Swift, which is a global banking organisation and network which provides a standardised and coded payment system, will now work alongside Singapore’s Fast and Secure Transfers network, which is also known as “Fast”.
According to reports, the partnership has already yielded results – with Swift celebrating international message transfers which happen in just 13 seconds.
Recent tests, which involved the gpi of Swift, saw almost 20 banks in 7 economies from diverse regions of the globe participate.
The test is one in a long line of such experiments in countries around the world.
Last year, Australia’s New Payments Platform, which is also known as its NPP, worked with a collective of banks to attempt fast transactions between itself and China, one of the country’s major economic partners.
The payment was able to occur in just 18 seconds. The news from Singapore, however, suggests that this is now happening even faster.
Swift is intending to launch its gpi in other markets across the globe later in the year.
The next big test will be between groups of banks in Europe on the Target Instant Payments Settlement, or TIPS.
This test will be one of the next major ones to occur before gpi Instant is rolled out across the world by the end of the year.
According to Henry Newman, who is the Head of Banking at Swift, the aim is to equalise the convenience levels involved in both internal and international transactions.
"Swift envisages that cross-border payments will become as convenient as domestic transactions", he said.
”The successful testing across multiple corridors between Europe and North America to Asia Pacific confirms the important role that gpi Instant will play in making that bold vision a reality.”
According to a spokesperson for Banque Internationale à Luxembourg, which participated in the tests, the record so far has been positive.
“We were very pleased that it only took 15 seconds to carry out the test payments between Europe and Asia”, Serge Munten, who is the bank’s Head of Agile Operations, said.
“These pilot tests with Swift are part of our efforts to offer our clients the same high level of services for worldwide payments they have come to appreciate for domestic payments.”
Experimentation like this has been going on in the online payments industry for a long time. Learn more about what other exciting projects are underway by checking out our news pages.
