The progress of SWIFT’s Global Payments Initiative since May 2017 has been astonishing. In February they announced that: 

• 50% of SWIFT gpi payments are credited in less than 30 minutes

• Payments are being sent across 220 country corridors

• New corridors are being opened every day 

• More than 100 billion USD in gpi payments made per day. 

Today gpi already accounts for 10% of SWIFT cross border payment traffic. More than 150 banks, representing over 78% of SWIFT’s cross-border payments traffic, have signed up to the service, sending hundreds of thousands of payments daily across 220 country corridors - including major corridors such as USA-China, where gpi already accounts for more than 25% of payment traffic. Nearly 50% of gpi payments are completed in less than 30 minutes, many within seconds. 

gpi Tracker extended to all payment messages

Today, SWIFT announced the extension of its gpi Tracker to cover all payment instructions sent across the network, enabling gpi banks to track all their SWIFT payment instructions at all times, and giving them full visibility over all their payments activity. 

End-to-end tracking reference - November 2018

The Tracker enables banks that have signed up to the service to track their gpi payments in real-time. From November a unique end-to-end transaction reference will be included in all payment instructions carried between all 11,000 customers on SWIFT at all times, across more than 200 countries and territories. This will give gpi customers full end-to-end tracking of all their payment messages quickly and efficiently, bringing even greater transparency and cost reduction. 

The introduction of the unique end-to-end transaction reference in all payment instructions will be effected through the mandatory annual standards update in November 2018. After this point, all SWIFT customers will be required to include the unique end-to-end transaction reference in their payment instructions, irrespective of whether they are gpi banks and or whether they are executing gpi payments. All regulated financial institutions on SWIFT are eligible to join the gpi. 

“SWIFT gpi has been hugely beneficial for banks and their customers since its launch, but extending this tracking facility across all payments traffic will be truly transformational,” says Harry Newman, Head of Payments at SWIFT. “These expanded tracking capabilities are part of a series of gpi services we will roll out in 2018 to further improve the cross-border payments experience, enable banks to provide a far superior service to their customers and rapidly attract more banks to join.”