SWIFT, along with a number of corporates and banks, has announced plans to start testing an enhanced multi-bank standard to improve cross-border payments for multi-banked corporates.

This enhanced standard, designed and built in conjunction with 10 multinational corporates and 12 leading banks, streamlines the process for treasurers by allowing them to initiate and track SWIFT global payments innovation (gpi) payments to and from multiple banks in a single format.

Pilot participants are to begin a test phase ahead of bringing this flow into production in the next few months. Those participating include Airbus, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BBVA, BNP Paribas, Booking.com, Borealis, Citi, Deutsche Bank, General Electric, IATA, Intesa Sanpaolo, JPMorgan, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Microsoft, National Australia Bank, Ping An Group, Roche, RTL Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Société Générale, Standard Chartered Bank and UniCredit.

Lisa Wagner, group treasury manager at Microsoft, commented: “The ability to access a greater level of payment information in a timely manner through SWIFT gpi will bring immediate benefits to our payments experience with greater transparency and responsiveness to our vendors.”

The standard design has been developed through a series of SWIFT-led workshops with pilot banks and corporates. It supports FIN and ISO 20022 standards to allow corporates to access their payments status across SWIFT and bank proprietary channels.

”Corporates want to track payments in real time and get confirmation of credit to the beneficiary’s account,” said Marc Delbaere, global head of corporates at SWIFT. “This new multi-bank capability will enable that experience in a consistent fashion, across multiple banks and multiple corporates.”

Launched in early 2017, gpi already has over 180 banks signed up, and accounts for nearly 30 per cent of SWIFT cross-border payment traffic. More than $100 billion in gpi messages is sent every day, enabling payments to be credited to end beneficiaries within minutes.

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