Swift launches new cross-border payment tracking solution

By Gloria Methri

Swift has set out plans to help financial institutions streamline the cross-border payments experience for their corporate customers. The company has extended ISO 20022 across the entire payment chain, giving banks ready-to-use, white-labelled tracking services that can be activated for customers at the click of a button.

Swift will enable financial institutions to capture rich data at source by standardising the payment end-to-end with ISO 20022.

It will also help banks offer their customers ready-made and white-labelled payment tracking services by API or messaging channel, giving complete transparency on a payment’s status as well as confirmation of its receipt.

Swift’s goal is to introduce a universal standard that can maximise the benefit of ISO 20022’s richer, more structured data, facilitating automation and reconciliation and drastically reducing integration costs.

The standardisation of payment tracking data will enable banks to easily offer the same experience across their corporate customer base, regardless of their own geographical reach or local investment. Currently, multi-banked corporates receive tracking information through different channels and in different formats.

Thierry Chilosi, Chief Strategy Officer at Swift, said, “Adoption of ISO 20022 provides a unique opportunity to improve cross-border payments. Capturing rich data at source will enhance the entire ecosystem, driving us closer to our goals of instant and frictionless transactions. We’re delighted to be making it easy for our community to extend the benefits to their customers while simplifying and standardising access to services, such as tracking, which are so important to efficient corporate treasury.”

Many members of Swift’s working group are implementing and piloting the new capabilities, and Swift intends to extend them to its wider community later this year.