SWIFT, a provider of secure financial messaging services, has completed trials to integrate its cross-border instant payments service, SWIFT gpi Instant, into Singapore’s domestic instant payment service, Fast And Secure Transfers (FAST).
Image: SWIFT trials instant cross-border payments service with Singapore’s FAST. Photo: Courtesy of SWIFT.
The trial involved 17 banks across seven countries, in which payments across continents were settled within 25 seconds, with the fastest between Australia and Singapore being 13 seconds, SWIFT claimed.
The trial was conducted across Australia, China, Canada, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Singapore and Thailand. According to SWIFT, the trial demonstrated the global scalability of its gpi in integrating with multiple domestic instant payment systems.
The banks that participated in the trial are: Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, Bangkok Bank, Bank of China, Banque Internationale à Luxembourg, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, DBS Bank, HSBC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, KASIKORNBANK, National Australia Bank, OCBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Siam Commercial Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, and Westpac.
The fastest payment from other countries in Asia Pacific to Singapore and processed onward took 14 seconds, 15 seconds from Europe and 20 seconds from North America.
Eleven banks made cross-border payments into Singapore and six banks in Singapore processed the payments domestically using the FAST system.
As a major advancement, the trial has extended the speed and transparency of SWFIT gpi deep into domestic markets, reaching a wider set of beneficiary accounts around the world.
SWIFT’s gpi Instant is claimed to reuse the existing cross-border and domestic payments infrastructure, minimizing implementation costs for users and allowing them to avoid the complexities of taking up a new cross-border infrastructure.
SWIFT gpi Instant used the 24×7 availability of FAST to settle payments in the destination market, even outside the normal business hours.
SWIFT banking head Harry Newman said: “Across the world, through gpi, banks and Instant Payment systems are using our existing rails for international payments to meet today’s need for speed, traceability and transparency.
“SWIFT envisages that cross-border payments will become as convenient as domestic transactions, and the successful testing across multiple corridors between Europe and North America to Asia Pacific confirms the important role that gpi Instant will play in making that bold vision a reality.”
Last year, a similar test was conducted with a group of banks and Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP) noted that payments between Australia and China took 18 seconds. A separate test between banks and the TARGET Instant Payments Settlement (TIPS) in Europe was announced earlier this year.
The TIPS, FAST and NPP payment systems are the first of several domestic real-time infrastructures to have been connected via banks, to enable a globally-scalable instant cross-border payments service. SWIFT is also planning additional tests in other markets with instant payment systems, ahead of the planned global launch of gpi Instant later this year.