SWIFT gpi reduces cross-border payment times to minutes, even seconds

100 financial services professionals from across the Middle East are attending SWIFT gpi Day in Dubai today. More than 100 billion USD in SWIFT gpi messages are being sent every day, enabling payments to be credited to end beneficiaries within minutes - many within seconds.

Overall, nearly 50% of SWIFT gpi payments are credited to end beneficiaries within 30 minutes[i], and almost 100% of payments within 24 hours. Those that take longer typically involve more complex foreign exchange conversions, compliance checks or regulatory authorisations.

SWIFT gpi has been adopted by more than 150 financial institutions around the world and hundreds of thousands of payments, representing nearly 10% of SWIFT’s cross-border payments traffic, are being sent daily across 220 international payment corridors. This includes major country corridors such as USA-China, where gpi payments already account for more than 25% of the payment traffic.

In addition to the 150 financial institutions that have adopted gpi, more than 50 payment market infrastructures are already exchanging gpi payments, enabling domestic exchange and tracking. Payment market infrastructures have a critical role to play in facilitating the end-to-end tracking of cross-border payments because as soon as international payments hit the destination country, they are typically cleared through local payment infrastructures. By being able to continue to track the payments in real-time, banks and their corporate clients can optimise their funds.

“Thanks to SWIFT gpi, banks are able to credit payments within minutes and even seconds, while their customers are facing shorter supply cycles and able to ship goods faster. This is a very significant step forward for banks and for their customers” says Harry Newman, Head of Banking, SWIFT. “In addition, banks receive fewer queries and have told us their enquiry-related costs are reduced by as much as 50% when they use SWIFT gpi. This is a major service improvement to end-users and a considerable cost saving for the industry.”

“We have seen a surge in both gpi adoption rates and number of transactions, and we expect adoption of SWIFT gpi to now grow very significantly. Instead of focussing on a limited number of bilateral routes which has limited value both for banks and their customers, gpi already offers very extensive coverage across banks, markets and geographies. By adding new banks and corridors every day, SWIFT gpi ensures banks and their customers get a truly global, fast, secure, and transparent cross-border payments service.”