SWIFT enlists 21 banks to pilot cross-border payments initiative

The initiative will operate on SWIFTs global messaging platform, and it will change the cross-border payments process by implementing new multilateral service-level agreements between participating banks. By capturing added business rules as part of the new service-level agreements, the project will enable banks to transfer rich payment information about cross-border payment transfers. The added rules and information capture will provide banks with end-to-end tracking of payments and transparency about fees, and will enable same-day use of funds.

The banks currently signed up to participate in the pilot program are ANZ, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Bank of China, Bank of New York Mellon, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Danske Bank, DBS, ICBC, ING Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, JPMorgan Chase, Mizuho, Nordea, Royal Bank of Canada, SMBC, Standard Chartered, UniCredit, and Wells Fargo.

In total, 51 banks have signed on as members of the cross-border payment initiative. Banks that are part of the initiative but are not currently taking part in the pilot may be on-boarded to the pilot while it is underway, so that they can be ready to go live once the pilot test is completed. The pilot test is expected to continue through December, and the project is expected to go live for all participants in 2017.

The first phase of the pilot will focus on business-to-business payments, aimed at upgrading payments transmissions between corporates and suppliers, and helping corporates achieve treasury efficiencies.