Swift offers end-to-end payment visibility in real time

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) is extending its Global Payments Innovation Tracker to cover all payment messaging sent across the network, enabling member banks to achieve full visibility over payments activity.

Available since May of 2017, the GPI Tracker will undergo the end-to-end upgrade in November.

Available as an API plug-in, 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.

Swift introduced the GPI in early 2016 and launched it in 2017 as an initiative to moving member correspondent banks toward common practices, messaging and network operations. It pushed for similar practices within legacy systems, while incorporating new technology as it becomes available.

“Enabling end-to-end tracking of all payment instructions through to the end destination is a game-changer,” Lars Sjögren, global head of transaction banking for Danske Bank, said in a press release.

“Until last year, it was impossible for banks to gather this information on behalf of their customers," Sjögren added. "But the introduction of the GPI Tracker has addressed this challenge head on, transforming cross-border payments and dramatically improving the service that banks can offer to their customers in a very cost efficient way.”

Swift says GPI already accounts for 10% of Swift cross border payment traffic. More than 150 banks, representing over 78% of the cooperative's cross-border payments activity have signed up to the service.

"It will significantly extend transparency and it will drive more banks to join the service, rapidly making gpi the new normal in cross-border payments," Navinder Duggal, group head of cash product management from DBS, one of the early GPI adopters in Asia, said in the release.