Swift, a cooperative that operates a widely used financial messaging service, today (Tuesday) announced that it is providing member banks with white-labelled tracking services for cross-border payments. The Belgium-headquartered body has also standardised its entire payment chain with the ISO 20022 standard.

Standardisation of Services

According to the official announcement, banks can now offer customers ready-made and white-labelled payment tracking services accessed via API or messaging channels. Swift highlighted that the tracking service will increase transparency of payment status and provide confirmation of receipts.

The white-label service will standardise the current corporate payment tracking systems, which come in different channels and formats, allowing financial institutions to offer the same experience to their corporate customer base.

“Having direct API access to Swift's payment tracking system will provide us with more transparency and strengthen our ability to analyse overall payment performance,” said Stefan Windisch, Global Head of In-House Bank at Roche, which has already implemented Swift’s corporate API. “It will allow us to refine our instructions, better identify inefficiencies, and minimise erosion of value in cross-border payments.”

The Backbone of Cross-Border Payments

Established in 1973, Swift is known for operating the inter-bank financial messaging network, which has become the backbone of cross-border payments. However, modern technologies like blockchain are now challenging the legacy payment network.

Earlier, Swift also pointed out that its infrastructure can “seamlessly” facilitate the transfer of tokenised assets across multiple public and private blockchains.

Swift pointed out the advantage of standardisation: its new system will standardise corporate payments complicated by competing standards and proprietary formats. The organisation also developed its new standardised services with 25 leading cash management banks and 20 sector-leading corporates.

“Adoption of ISO 20022 provides a unique opportunity to improve cross-border payments,” Swift’s Chief Strategy Officer, Thierry Chilosi, said.

“Capturing rich data at source will enhance the entire ecosystem, driving us closer to our goals of instant and frictionless transactions. We’re delighted to be making it easy for our community to extend the benefits to their customers while simplifying and standardising access to services, such as tracking, which are so important to efficient corporate treasury.”