A group of Swift veterans have unveiled a global payment addressing service for banks and fintechs that promises to make transferring money around the world as easy as sending a text message.
Founded by three former Swift staffers, iPiD (International Payments Identity) has built a service - with partner Palo IT - that enables users to make cross-border payments anywhere in the world using only a simple proxy, such as phone number, for the payee’s identity.
The addressing service uses the proxy to retrieve all the other data that is required, including an account number and bank name, without the payee needing to provide financial details they may not be familiar with.
The service is platform agnostic and uses APIs, meaning that it works on current payment rails and can be integrated by banks and fintechs, while tapping existing regulatory compliance processes.
Running on Microsoft Azure, the concept was tested late last year and will now be operated by iPiD as it looks to bring onboard partner firms.
Damien Dugauquier, iPiD co-founder, says: "This solution makes sending payments anywhere in the world as simple as sending a text message. As well as making the payment experience much easier, it will drastically reduce the cost of failed payments, which was estimated at $118.5 billion in 2020."