More than $100 billion in SWIFT gpi messages are being sent every day, enabling payments to be credited to end beneficiaries within minutes—many within seconds, according to a report by SWIFT.
Some 50 percent of SWIFT gpi payments are credited in less than 30 minutes, and almost 100 percent of payments are completed within 24 hours.
According to SWIFT, those that take longer typically involve more complex foreign exchange conversions, compliance checks or regulatory authorisations.
SWIFT gpi has been adopted by more than 150 financial institutions around the world and hundreds of thousands of payments, representing nearly 10 percent of SWIFT’s cross-border payments traffic, are being sent daily across 220 international payment corridors.
This includes the US and China, where gpi payments already account for more than 25 percent of the payment traffic.
More than 50 payment market infrastructures are already exchanging gpi payments, enabling domestic exchange and tracking, SWIFT reported.
SWIFT said that by being able to continue to track the payments in real-time, banks and their corporate clients can optimise their funds.
Harry Newman, head of banking at SWIFT, commented: “Thanks to SWIFT gpi, banks are able to credit payments within minutes and even seconds, while their customers are facing shorter supply cycles and able to ship goods faster.”
“This is a very significant step forward for banks and for their customers.”
He added: “In addition, banks receive fewer queries and have told us their enquiry-related costs are reduced by as much as 50 percent when they use SWIFT gpi. This is a major service improvement to end-users and a considerable cost saving for the industry.”
He said: “By adding new banks and corridors every day, SWIFT gpi ensures banks and their customers get a truly global, fast, secure, and transparent cross-border payments service.”
