Yesterday’s SWIFT press release stated, “Corporate treasurers around the world are getting a better cross-border payments experience, today” as they announced that, “Major global transaction banks are live with SWIFT GPI”. However, they can deliver the GPI services in very different ways. Corporates need to know from their banks exactly what is being delivered and the pricing.

GPI member banks

SWIFT released the names of global transaction banks are actively using SWIFT’s new global payments innovation (gpi) service:

• ABN AMRO, Bank of China, BBVA, Citi, Danske Bank, DBS Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, ING Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, Nordea Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and UniCredit 

These banks are live with SWIFT GPI, and exchanging GPI payments across 60 country corridors. 

Some vital questions

SWIFT and the banks have designed the GPI services so that banks have flexibility in how they offer the new services. Questions that need to be asked about each bank’s GPI service, include:

• Will you be offering direct access to the GPI Payment Tracker? Will there be any tracing and tracking charges?
• What enhanced data services be offered and will they be charged for?
• How will the same day use of funds work?
• How do we report banks that are not complying with the new GPI standards?
• Will there be any other extra charges? If so, what?

Future development

SWIFT is already designing the next phase of GPI, which will include additional digital services to further transform the cross-border payment experience, such as a rich payment data service. Also SWIFT have announced the launch of a Proof of Concept (PoC) to explore whether distributed ledger technology (DLT) can be used by banks to improve the reconciliation of their nostro databases in real time, optimising their global liquidity.