SWIFT's Global Payments Innovation (GPI) initiative has “become the new standard in cross-border payments”, as it processed more than two million payments last month, SWIFT has claimed.

More than 120 transaction banks, representing over 75 per cent of all SWIFT payments, are signed up to the service, while just 24 banks are live and actively using SWIFT GPI. These banks exchange several thousands of messages daily across 100 country corridors and the number of banks actively using GPI is expected to increase to 40 by the end of this year.

The next phase of SWIFT GPI will include

• stop and recall a payment,
• transfer of rich payment data and
• a payment assistant to provide more intelligence at payment origination.

This is one of the news releases to come out of the first day of SWIFT's Sibos event, currently being held in Toronto. In his opening speech yesterday, SWIFT's Gottfried Leibbrandt was bullish that the GPI initiative will stand up against and outperform rivals such as Ripple, which is also holding a conference in Toronto this week, called Swell by Ripple. Leibbrandt was also confident his organisation is in control of the threat from cyber criminals, saying the risk was now just a “management nuisance”.