Six leading Swiss corporates with international operations - including ABB, Nestle, Roche, SBB, Swiss Re and Wurth – have issued an open letter in support of Swift's global payment innovation initiative to improve the speed, transparency and predictability of cross-border payments.
The corporates state a belief that the programme addresses the pain points they currently experience when making cross-border payments, centreing around a lack of visibility into the end-to-end transaction lifecyle - not knowing when payments have been credited or what fees have been deducted. Equally, they do not know when or why a payment has been rejected and which party should initiate an investigation.
The group describes Swift gpi - essentially a range of service-level agreements between correspondents - as a "long overdue, essential improvement of the customer needs for higher cross-border payment speed, transparency and end-to-end tracking".
The letter continues: “The increasing number of banks going live on this service addresses the demands of corporate treasurers. Hence, banks cannot afford to not join the initiative and go live as soon as possible. Our expectation is that all of our cross-border payments will be end-to-end Swift gpi payments in the future.”
Since it became available in January 2017, 20 global transaction banks have begun actively applying the gpi principles to corporate payment flows, with another 50 in the implementation pipeline.
Wim Raymaekers, head of banking markets and Swift gpi, says: “Already today, with so many banks supporting Swift gpi, corporates are getting an enhanced experience directly from their banks, in over 85 country corridors. With its open membership model, we welcome more banks to join Swift gpi and respond to the needs of their clients, as expressed by global corporates around the world”, said