The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, better known as SWIFT, has been providing a secure network for sending financial messages since the 1970s. SWIFT does not hold funds or manage accounts on behalf of its customers but enables financial institutions, market infrastructures and corporates to communicate reliably and securely via standardised financial messages
The global payments initiative is SWIFT’s new service upgrade, focused on improving efficiency via speed, more transparency and better trackability in the cross-border payments space. According to SWIFT, “more than USD 300bn is now sent daily via gpi, with 50 per cent of SWIFT gpi payments delivered within 30 minutes and 40 per cent credited within five minutes, many in just seconds. To date, SWIFT gpi has been adopted by more than 3,500 banks globally. By 2020, all banks will be able to track and confirm all their payments from end to end.”
Coming to the Nordics
Having made some features of SWIFT gpi already available in Denmark, Nordea is on the way to implementing the payments service for the rest of the Nordics.
Emma Printzél, Global Product Manager at Nordea, says: “We work with SWIFT and we have of course done so for many years. SWIFT gpi is a significant upgrade that introduces several improvements for our customers. We are already a fully compliant gpi bank in Denmark and were a first mover there. Now that the adoption rate of gpi globally has matured to a satisfactory level, we are taking the next steps to expand the offering across the Nordic region.”
“The new features introduced are a big step forward in enabling extra functionality around payments. As well as track and trace, the transparency of payments is key. You are able to gain more information about the payment and what is happening in the payment chain with regards to FX rates, fees and time. You also have the possibility to stop and recall funds in a different way. If you send off a payment by mistake, it’s easier to stop it now within SWIFT gpi.”
“Also, SWIFT gpi will have a big impact on the investigations space as we will be able to speed them up and make them more streamlined. From the banks perspective, this is where we can save time and working hours. In the best of worlds, we would later on like to push this even further out to the customers so that they can initiate investigations themselves either via their ERP systems or through a portal, etc so that they don’t need to contact the bank personally as they are doing today. That would increase customers’ control of the process and on the Nordea side release resources from our operations. That is the ambition in the end,” she adds.