SWIFT

Calling it a first in international payments, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication [Swift] is providing a cross-border, real-time payments tracker for banks handling global transactions.

The global messaging network Swift and its fintech challenger, Ripple, have been vying for bankers’ hearts and minds for more than a year. Whoever prevails, their latest moves could bring needed change to how international banking is done.

Bottomline Technologies, which specializes in business payments, is the latest to introduce a fraud-fighting solution for members of the Swift payment network.

Leaked documents appear to show NSA analysts were able to hack into Middle Eastern banks’ servers through the Swift service bureau EastNets. The same tools could conceivably be used by cybercriminals and nation-states with more sinister motives.

The new controls include transaction-screening parameters users may adjust to their own risk and compliance policies.

The move is noteworthy because Delatinne had led customer engagement for Swift’s global payments innovation initiative, with which Ripple’s cross-border payment system competes.

The certification covers compliance, risk and strategy expertise as the payments industry becomes increasingly digitized and global.

A dozen global transaction banks are now using the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication's new global payments initiative service to improve cross-border payment delivery.

The initiative pushes open and collaborative development of uses cases for the distributed ledger technology in financial services and payments.

The Society for Worldwide Financial Telecommunication is exploring the potential of distributed ledger technology for banks to provide real-time reconciliation of their databases for accounts they hold in other banks in a foreign currency.