The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication plans to add instant payments messaging for the European market by late 2018, marking another step in its ongoing faster payments projects.
The service will allow instant payments over the Swift network and offer customers a single gateway to connect seamlessly to multiple instant payments systems.
The new messaging in Europe comes two years after Swift began working on the messaging infrastructure to support Australia's faster payments platform, a system that is expected to go live this year.
“Our instant payments strategy has delivered early successes in Australia and I am confident it will bring significant benefit to our customers globally," Christian Sarafidis, chief marketing officer at Swift, said in a June 14 press release.
"Initially, the instant payments gateway will provide access to multiple instant payments operators across Europe, and then the plan is to further expand into other markets,” Sarafidis added.
Swift says the instant payments gateway can be used on its own, or it can be integrated with Swift's alliance messaging hub, which enables the processing of financial message flows and integration with back office systems.
Swift's advancements in instant payment messaging fits in with its overall
