SWIFT gpi is already a major myth buster, as we showed in our item on Citi’s Payment Insights service, improving payment visibility and speed, but for it to have global impact gpi needs to be multi-bank and to be incorporated into corporate back-office/ERP systems. Behind the scenes banks and corporates have been working on how to do this for many months.

Pilot testing of enhanced multi-bank standard

SWIFT, along with a number of corporates and banks, yesterday announced plans to start testing an enhanced multi-bank standard to further improve the cross-border payments experience for multi-banked corporates. This enhanced standard, designed and built in conjunction with 10 multinational corporates and 12 leading banks, streamlines the process for corporate treasurers by allowing them to initiate and track gpi payments to and from multiple banks in a single format and integrate gpi flows in ERP and Treasury Management Systems.

The first-of-its kind, this cross-industry collaboration tailors SWIFT gpi service for multibanked corporates, by introducing a common solution delivered in the same way for all gpi banks. 

Pilot participants are to begin a test phase ahead of bringing this flow into production in the next few months. Corporates and banks participating in the pilot include:

• Airbus, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BBVA, BNP Paribas, Booking.com, Borealis, Citi, Deutsche Bank, General Electric, IATA, Intesa Sanpaolo, J.P. Morgan, 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. 

SWIFT has also invited leading treasury application providers to integrate the gpi flows into their own systems in order to deliver a fully embedded gpi experience in corporate treasury systems.

The new standard design:

• has been developed through a series of SWIFT-led co-creation workshops with pilot banks and corporates. It supports FIN & ISO 20022 standards to allow corporates to access their payments status across SWIFT and bank proprietary channels.
• Twill enable application providers and banks to give corporates better visibility and transparency, improving payments certainty, traceability, exception handling and allowing them to reconcile directly in their treasury operations. 

Commments from leading corporates:

• Lisa Wagner, Group Treasury Manager at Microsoft: “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. Providing multi-bank information all in one place and in the same format fits into our modern finance roadmap.”
• Martin Schlageter, Head of Treasury Operations at Roche: “We are very pleased to participate in the SWIFT gpi for Corporates pilot. There are many challenges to tackle with cross-border payments but SWIFT gpi, combined with the broader SWIFT for Corporates programme, will bring considerable benefits to improving the transparency and visibility of our cross-border payments.” 

SWIFTgpi progress

Launched in early 2017, gpi already has over 180 banks signed up, and accounts for nearly 30% of SWIFT crossborder payment traffic. More than 100 billion USD in SWIFT gpi messages is sent every day, enabling payments to be credited to end beneficiaries within minutes – many within seconds.

To date, 35 million gpi payments have been sent across 450 country corridors, in more than 100 currencies. In major corridors, such as USA-China, gpi already accounts for nearly 50% of payment traffic.

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CTMfile take: When the new multi-bank SWIFTgpi solution works, multi-banked corporates will be able to initiate/receive and track gpi payments to & from all their banks from inside own ERP or TMS systems = a dream come true.