Swift is teaming up with national payment systems such as Spain's Bizum and Brazil's Pix to let consumers send money abroad using a phone number or email. Meanwhile, most of the banks on Swift's blockchain ledger have now used it.
Photo: Queues at the Sibos check-in in Miami, where Swift presented its plans for simpler cross-border payments. Credit: Sibos
Swift presented the news as the major banking conference Sibos opened in Miami in the US on 28 September. Sibos is Swift's own annual conference, where banks, payment companies and technology suppliers gather to show what they are working on in payments and financial infrastructure.
National payment systems such as Bizum in Spain, PayID in Australia and Pix in Brazil let millions of consumers send money without knowing the recipient's account details. Swift now wants to bring the same simplicity to cross-border payments.
Swift does not move money itself, but sends standardised payment messages between more than 11,500 banks and other financial institutions in over 200 countries.
The solution means that identifiers already registered in the national systems – phone numbers, email addresses and virtual payment addresses – can be securely linked to a cross-border payment sent over Swift. The sender can then use the same identifier for the recipient as for a domestic payment.
Banks, payment companies and technology providers from four continents are involved: Australian Payments Plus (AP+), Banco de Crédito del Perú, Banorte, BBVA, Bizum, Bradesco, Caixabank, Citizens Bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, DBS, IDFC FIRST Bank, Ouribank, TerraPay and Veritran.
Bizum describes the work as a proof of concept. Swift does not say when consumers will be able to use the solution.
"Our goal is to make sending money abroad as easy as sending it at home. Together with the banks, we have already changed how fast and predictably cross-border payments move. Now we are going further and removing complexity from the very first click, so people can send money abroad with greater confidence."
Juan Martinez, head of Swift's payments platform
Australian Payments Plus runs PayID. Chief executive Lynn Kraus points out that Australians are already used to sending money with a phone number or email without remembering account numbers, and sees the initiative as an important step towards making cross-border payments feel more like domestic ones.
The initiative is the next step in Swift's scheme for consumer payments, launched in June. More than 100 financial institutions are either live or joining the scheme.
The scheme shows the customer costs and the exchange rate upfront, and the recipient receives the full amount with no deductions along the way. Swift itself highlights examples of payments arriving from Turkey to Spain in 15 seconds, from Australia to India in 37 seconds and from Brazil to the US in around a minute.
According to Swift, 75 per cent of payments over the network reach the recipient bank within ten minutes, often within seconds. Yet 80 per cent of the time a typical payment takes is spent on the final stretch, from when the payment leaves the Swift network at the domestic bank until the money reaches the customer's account.
That is the stretch the consumer scheme aims to shorten. Swift links the work to the targets the G20 countries have set for faster and cheaper cross-border payments.
Swift also gave a status update on the blockchain-based ledger Swift is developing with major banks. According to Swift, most of the 17 first-mover banks have now used it for real-time payments around the clock, with tokenised value sent between Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America.
The banks have transacted in five currencies – the euro, the British pound, the Hong Kong dollar, the Singapore dollar and the US dollar – for settlement between institutions, corporate treasury and interbank funding. The first version is based on tokenised deposits, meaning ordinary bank deposits in digital form on a blockchain. According to Swift, the ledger is designed to be extended to areas such as programmable money and payments carried out by AI agents.
"The question is no longer traditional or decentralised finance. It is not either-or. The Swift platform will let you move any form of regulated value, whether ordinary money or tokenised value, at global scale. More than 200 countries and markets, and 40,000 payment corridors. That is what this is about."
Javier Pérez-Tasso, chief executive of Swift, opening Sibos
Sources: Swift
You have read what you can read for free. With an account you get unlimited access to all news and articles on kaupr.io — and become part of the network of investors, professionals and builders following onchain finance.
