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March 26, 2024

On the wires

March 25, 2024

On the wires

Swift Sets Industry Up for Seamless Introduction of CBDCs for Cross-Border Transactions as Interlinking Solution Finds More Use Cases

Business Wire

"Swift announced the findings of the second phase of industry-wide sandbox testing on its central bank digital currency (CBDC) interlinking solution, with the results showing that its connector can enable financial institutions to carry out a wide range of financial transactions using CBDCs and other forms of digital tokens, easily incorporating them into their business practices."

February 13, 2024

On the web

January 2, 2024

On the web

November 30, 2023

On the web

September 25, 2023

On the web

Sibos TV: Swift & Visa's Collaboration to Streamline International B2B Payments [Video]

YouTube

"Swift and Visa have announced a partnership to streamline international business-to-business payments, providing financial institutions and their customers with more choice when sending money across borders, while improving the end-to-end speed and transparency of their transactions. Chris Newkirk, Global Head of New Flows, Commercial and Money Movement Solutions at Visa and Thierry Chilosi, Chief Strategy Officer at Swift join Sibos TV shed a light on the collaboration and how it will benefit the industry."

September 19, 2023

On the web

September 18, 2023

On the wires

September 13, 2023

On the wires

August 30, 2023

On the web

SWIFT: Small Payments. Big Opportunity

SWIFT

"Research: To help better understand the booming demand for low-value cross-border payments, we asked consumers and SMEs in eight key markets what they value most when sending money abroad. Those markets were Australia, China, Germany, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the UK and the US."

August 22, 2023

On the wires

June 7, 2023

On the web

March 24, 2023

On the web

Swift Successfully Trials Blockchain for Corporate Actions

Markets Media

"How can the securities industry reduce costly frictions in communicating corporate actions? Learn more about the results of our latest collaborative experiments to find out. Together with six leading securities industry participants – including American Century Investments, Citi and Northern Trust – we’ve successfully piloted an innovative blockchain-based solution that could reduce costly frictions associated with communicating significant corporate events to investors. The testing concluded that the experimental solution could be beneficial for the industry, providing a clear and consistent view of corporate actions throughout the investor ecosystem, as well as quickly alerting when changes or updates occur."

March 9, 2023

On the web

Banks See "Clear Potential and Value" in Swift's Experimental CBDC Connector After Sandbox Collaboration

EIN News

"Swift announced further progress on its experimental solution for interlinking Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), reporting that 18 central and commercial banks found "clear potential and value" in the API-based CBDC connector after a comprehensive review. The cooperative published the findings of the 12-week period of collaborative sandbox testing, in which almost 5,000 transactions were simulated between two different blockchain networks and with existing fiat-based payment systems. Central and commercial bank participants expressed strong support for the solution's continued development, noting that it enabled seamless exchange of CBDCs, even those built on different platforms."

December 23, 2022

On the web

Ripple to Replace SWIFT – Newest GPI Direct Response to ODL’s Expansion to More than 40 Countries

Crypto News Flash

“Ripple Inc., a leading American blockchain infrastructure provider fighting the SEC in a lawsuit, is working to help reduce cross-border friction through the real-time global settlement platform, On-Demand Liquidity (ODL). The ODL has significantly been adopted worldwide with Ripple noting that over 40 new markets have been onboarded. As such, market strategists unanimously agree XRP is significantly undervalued and perhaps suppressed by the Ripple vs SEC lawsuit.”

November 29, 2022

On the web

Swift Go Sign-Ups Triple as Cooperative Makes Significant Progress on G20 Goals to Enhance Cross-Border Experience

SWIFT

“Swift reported significant progress in 2022 toward the G20’s goals for enhancing the cross-border experience, rapidly setting a new standard for low-value payments, transforming upfront payment processing to remove friction, bringing new levels of transparency to the securities industry, and delivering breakthrough innovation to integrate CBDCs into the financial ecosystem. The progress is the result of strong strategic focus over the past two years to enable instant, frictionless processing between 4 billion accounts worldwide and aligns with the G20’s objectives of improving speed, cost, transparency, choice and access in the cross-border payments experience. Swift’s achievements this year include: Increasing speed – Today, nearly half of Swift transactions reach end beneficiaries within 5 minutes and two thirds arrive within one hour, well on the way to the G20’s target of 75% settling within 60 minutes; Giving choice to small businesses and consumers – Sign-ups for Swift Go, which brings speed, transparency, and certainty to payments under $10,000, have tripled to more than 500 banks across more than 120 countries…”

October 28, 2022

On the web

Swift Accepts Community Request to Start ISO 20022 Migration in March 2023

SWIFT - The global provider of secure financial messaging services

“Swift has worked extensively with its global community to prepare for the start of the ISO 20022 migration for cross-border payments and reporting (CBPR+) and since August, all required capabilities have been deployed and institutions have been able to exchange ISO 20022 messages on an opt-in basis. On 20 October 2022, the ECB shared its decision delaying the ISO 20022 migration of the Eurosystem by four months. In light of this announcement and in line with our earlier scenario planning, Swift committed to further analyse and validate impacts on the timeline for CBPR+ with a view to maintaining operational and business continuity across the global financial system. An overwhelming majority of our global community has requested that Swift align the start of the global ISO 20022 migration for CBPR+ with the ECB’s updated timetable to ease implementation. In response, we have taken a decision to accommodate this request, and Swift will begin the ISO 20022/MT coexistence period for all users on 20 March 2023.”

October 6, 2022

On the web

Immediate Cross-Border Payments (IXB) Pilot Set to Revolutionize International Payments

The Clearing House

“EBA CLEARING, The Clearing House (TCH) and SWIFT announced today that the delivery of the Immediate Cross-Border Payments (IXB) pilot service is on track and is set to revolutionize cross-border payments. The IXB pilot service will leverage the existing real-time payment systems RTP® in the United States, run by TCH, and RT1 in Europe, run by EBA CLEARING. IXB will begin processing the first live transactions in the euro and U.S. dollar currency corridor in the coming months. Developed with the support of 25 financial institutions from both sides of the Atlantic, the IXB pilot has been progressing during the past six months, resulting in the timely delivery of the IXB solution processing the technical messaging between the pilot institutions engaged in the testing and the respective payment systems. End-to-end testing between RTP, the IXB app and RT1 is ongoing with user integration and testing following shortly thereafter.”

October 5, 2022

On the web

SWIFT Sets Out Blueprint for Central Bank Digital Currency Network

Reuters

“Financial messaging system SWIFT has laid out its blueprint for a global central bank digital currency (CBDC) network following an 8-month experiment on different technologies and currencies. The trial, which for the last month has involved both France and Germany’s national central banks as well as global lenders like HSBC, Standard Chartered and UBS, looked at how CBDCs could be used internationally and even converted into fiat money if needed.”

September 19, 2022

On the web

SWIFT and Symbiont Announce Corporate Data Blockchain Pilot

Cointelegraph

“The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) disclosed on Tuesday a partnership with fintech company Symbiont to provide more accurate data for financial firms through blockchain technology.  Vanguard, Citigroup, American Century Investments and Northern Trust are among the companies participating in the initiative. According to the announcement, the pilot project “could help providers distribute data in near real time to global custody clients.” Through Assembly, Symbiont’s proprietary technology platform and smart contracts will be used “to create a network effect that leverages the 11,000+ institutions connected to SWIFT globally.””

September 13, 2022

On the web

SWIFT and Symbiont Anounce Corporate Data Blockchain Pilot

Cointelegraph

“The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) disclosed on Tuesday a partnership with fintech company Symbiont to provide more accurate data for financial firms through blockchain technology.  Vanguard, Citigroup, American Century Investments, and Northern Trust are among the companies participating in the initiative. According to the announcement, the pilot project “could help providers distribute data in near real time to global custody clients.” Through Assembly, Symbiont’s proprietary technology platform, smart contracts will be used “to create a network effect that leverages the 11,000+ institutions connected to SWIFT globally.”

September 2, 2022

On the web

Predictive Data Intelligence Removes Hurdles to Instant Cross-Border Transactions Over SWIFT

SWIFT - The global provider of secure financial messaging services

“As part of its ambitious strategy for instant and frictionless transactions, SWIFT today announces a new capability that uses its global intelligence on past cross-border flows to predict potential problems before new international payments are sent. The new service analyses previous flows on the SWIFT network to identify accounts that have been credited successfully and uses this information to detect potential errors in payee information – the most common cause of cross-border delays. This centralised verification, based on aggregated and anonymised data from 9 billion transaction messages between 4 billion accounts each year, provides a level of insight no single financial institution has on its own and gives real-time confidence that a payment will go through, regardless of whether the parties or banks in a transaction have transacted with each other before.”

August 31, 2022

On the web

SWIFT Applies Predictive Analytics to Reduce Processing Errors in Cross-Border Transactions

Securities Finance Times

“SWIFT has announced a service that applies predictive analytics to cross-border payments data to pre-empt potential errors before a payment is executed.This solution analyses previous payments transactions conducted over the SWIFT network, on an aggregated and anonymised basis, to identify potential errors in payee details and other trade information that may cause the payment to fail or be processed incorrectly.It is an extension of SWIFT’s Payment Pre-validation services and is available to banks via application programming interface, or API.”

August 25, 2022

On the web

The Biggest Change to Our Financial System in 50 Years is Happening in November 2022

Medium

“International Payments are moving to the blockchain (ISO 20022): Many cryptocurrency investors are looking to reap massive returns as the 50-year-old international payments system moves onto the blockchain beginning in November 2022. This is part of what is known as ISO 20022, a single standardization approach to be used by all financial standards initiatives. The new standardization is set to officially begin in November 2022 and be fully implemented by November 2025. There are many cryptocurrencies that will be integrated into this new financial system, referred to as ISO 20022 compliment cryptocurrencies and there is much speculation these cryptocurrencies will soar in price once the standard is implemented. 45.8 million Transactions per day – This is how many transactions the existing international payment systems handle.”

July 22, 2022

On the web

SWIFT Turns Focus to Digital Assets in 2022 Hackathon

CryptoSlate

“Global payment giant SWIFT determined its 2022 hackathon theme as “Digital assets: exploring interoperability and ownership” as it hopes to bring the brightest of the industry together to collaborate and innovate on digital assets. The company acknowledged the significance of digital assets for the future of finance by stating: “Digital assets are a key topic on the innovation agenda, as many leading forces in the industry know.” SWIFT also said that it has been experimenting with digital assets on its own and with major industry players. The company hopes to take its efforts further with the 2022 hackathon.”

July 13, 2022

On the web

Swift: Shaking Up the Cross-Border Payment Experience

World Finance

“International payments are fundamental to global trade and business as we know it today. Without an efficient cross-border transfer system, businesses and their banking partners stand to lose significant capital. Yet for decades, the day-to-day challenges of managing cross-border payments have plagued us. Delays, hidden fees, failed transfers, limited access and a lack of transparency throughout the chain have all contributed to making international transfers problematic and at times costly, slowing business and hindering relations. In 2020, under the request of the G20, the Financial Stability Board created a roadmap to improve cross-border payments, with key targets including increased data quality, steps to coordinate regulatory frameworks and research into new and existing payment infrastructure. Yet issues still remain, and many banks and corporates continue to struggle. At Bank of the West – a subsidiary of BNP Paribas headquartered in San Francisco – we’ve signed up to SWIFT global payments innovation (gpi) to help alleviate the most pressing of these challenges. The multi-year SWIFT gpi initiative has been rolled out in stages by the global banking community with one goal: to improve the cross-border payments experience for both senders and recipients.”

June 14, 2022

On the web

ISO 20022: Full of Promise But Treasurers Remain Wary

The Global Treasurer

“Global payment has been transformed for the better over the last decade and while champions of the new payment messaging standard ISO 20022 believe it will deliver it even more profound benefits for the industry over the next ten years, corporate treasurers are more circumspect. At a recent conference Ross Jones, head of global payments at Barclays, provided a timely overview of the migration to ISO 20022 and the opportunities and challenges it represents.”

May 18, 2022

On the web

Swift: Case Management: Simpler Payment Investigations For All

Swift

“We’ve [Swift] extended our Case Management product suite beyond just gpi-enabled banks. That means that everyone in our community can now benefit from our Stop and Recall and Case Resolution services. Within the world of payments, things don’t always go to plan. Whether that’s an incorrect account number that needs to be repaired or a fraudulent transaction that needs to be reversed. And too often these exceptions and investigations can be time consuming, taking hours of back and forth just to get clarity on the status of a payment. For every minute that an investigation takes, it’s the end-customer who ends up waiting longer for their money….By extending Case Management to our entire community, non-gpi banks can now fully benefit from both Case Resolution and Stop and Recall. This brings us one step closer to our goal of a frictionless, industry-wide solution for exceptions and investigations.”

April 28, 2022

On the web

EBA CLEARING, SWIFT and The Clearing House to Deliver Pilot Service for Immediate Cross-Border Payments

ebaclearing

“EBA CLEARING, SWIFT and The Clearing House (TCH) announced today that they plan to launch a pilot service for immediate cross-border (IXB) payments with the support of banks from both sides of the Atlantic. The pilot service is scheduled to begin by the end of this year with several participants joining the service in a phased approach. It is being designed with the contribution of 24 financial institutions, including those that are preparing to join the pilot.”

April 20, 2022

On the web

Russia Central Bank Will Not Name Banks Linked to SWIFT Alternative

Reuters

“Russia’s central bank said on Tuesday it would no longer publish the names of banks connected to Moscow’s alternative to the SWIFT payments network, as Russia grapples with sanctions. Several Russian banks have been banned from SWIFT after Moscow began what it calls “a special military operation” in Ukraine on Feb. 24 as part of wider western penalties designed to isolate Russia from global markets over the invasion.”

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