“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…”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.””