Banking co-operative Swift is to extend its global payments innovation (gpi) scheme to all 10,000 member banks on the network as it faces up to competition from the likes of Ripple and a growing disenchantment with old-school correspondent banking models.
The ambition is to move all banks across to the new framework - which promises same day end-to-end delivery with full tracking and transparency, throughout the payment chain - by the end of 2020.
So far 180 banks have signed up for the scheme, including 49 of the world's top 50 financial institutions, which now accounts for 25% of Swift's cross-border payment flows.
Yawar Shah, chairman of Swift says: “The gpi service has been designed, developed and deployed in record time, and is already radically transforming the cross-border payments experience."
In a sly dig at Ripple, which loses no opportunity to take pot-shots at Swift and the gpi initiative, Shah adds: "No other service has been able to safely deliver hundreds of billions of dollars in payments around the world in minutes or seconds. The time is now right to accelerate the adoption of gpi, ensuring that all banks on the network adopt it.”
To assist smaller or more occasional users, Shah says Swift will introduce a basic gpi service, enabling all payments to and from these banks to receive full gpi treatment throughout the payment chain.