Swift reports that two years on from launch, its global payments innovation (gpi) initiative has reached an important milestone by accounting for over 50% of messaging traffic across the interbank network.

Introduced in February 2017 the gpi scheme - a set of service-level agreements between banks that promised end-to-end delivery with full tracking and transparency of messages across the network - was a response to competition from the real-time gross settlement system launched by Ripple and growing dissatisfaction with traditional correspondent banking models.

Rapid adoption saw the share of cross-border messages using gpi quickly grow from 15% at the start of 2018, to 56% by the end of the year, a year-on-year increase of 270%. In total, more than US$40 trillion was transferred over the service in 2018. 

New services in pipeline

Swift has pledged to move all its 10,000 member banks to gpi by 2020, using it as a building block to release new services, including a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) for bank-to-bank interaction and post payment reconciliation, links to domestic payment schemes and interfaces to third party networks.

“We can now move quickly to realise our ambition of ensuring ubiquitous real-time - even instant - cross-border payments right around the world,” said Gottfried Leibbrandt, Swift’s CEO.

“By incorporating APIs, trialling distributed ledger technology and exploring new technologies such as predictive analytics, we will continue to deliver new functionalities and applications at pace - ensuring that the cross-border payments experience rapidly becomes as seamless as domestic payments.”