SWIFT

Ripple Labs Inc., the blockchain startup whose digital money is often used as a proxy for other cryptocurrency payments, is gaining new customers because financial firms are seeking faster, more up-to-date technology than the Swift banking network, Chief Executive Officer Brad Garlinghouse said.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication says a pre-validation system it will launch soon to catch payment message mistakes prior to dispatch should increase the number of payments reaching beneficiaries in less than 30 seconds.

About half of Swift Global Payments Innovation transactions are credited within 30 minutes and many within seconds.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, has named David Scola, a former Barclays exec, its new head of North America operations.

The fact remains that the vast majority of international payments are still done via banks and through the correspondent (SWIFT) network, writes Rosie Faulkner, vice president and money laundering reporting officer at Earthport.

Citigroup is using tracking and transparency to push back against rivals that paint traditional bank-powered international payments as a costly, time-consuming relic.

The OCC finds widespread problems in bank retail sales practices; Ripple and Swift competition for payments pits technology against convention.

Blockchain's potential for revolutionizing the world’s payment systems has captured the imagination in recent years, and last month Santander became the U.K.'s first bank to use the technology to create a new international payments service.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication has its sights set on expanding real-time payments in the Asia-Pacific region as part of its plan to further its first value-add service created from the Global Payments Innovation initiative.

The tracking engine automatically provides status updates to all GPI banks involved in any GPI payment chain and allows them to confirm when a payment has been completed.