Established in 1973, SWIFT or Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications is a cooperative that provides safe and secure financial transactions between the financial institutions that are a part of the network. Before the SWIFT, the only way to conduct international transactions was telex. This method was unreliable, insecure and very prone to human error. SWIFT network standardized international money transfers with proprietary communications platform to facilitate the transmission of information about financial transactions. Financial institutions that are involved in the network can securely exchange this information, which also includes payment instructions.

SWIFT gpi (Global Payments Initiative) can be considered as an upgrade to the existing SWIFT system. It is a system aiming to standardize cross-border payments and provides transparency, increased speed and the ability to track payments end-to-end.

The finance sector embraced SWIFT gpi very quickly. By the end of the year 2018, there are more than 3500 banks committing to adopt this cross-border payment standard. In fact, more than $40 trillion was sent over SWIFT gpi which contributes to 56% of all cross-border payments over the SWIFT system. Considering this means 270% year-to-year increase in SWIFT gpi payments it is safe to say that SWIFT gpi delivers what it promises and although it is optional for banks, SWIFT gpi is becoming the new standard in cross-border payments.

SWIFT gpi has brought some significant improvements to how international payments are handled and increased the service quality provided to the customer. Although time differences and operational hours play a role in finalizing the payment processes, 50% of all SWIFT gpi payments are finalized within 5 minutes. And 100% of all SWIFT gpi payments are completed within 24 hours. The significant increase in the speed of cross-border payments not only increase the service quality but also strengthens the commercial relations with suppliers.

Moreover, SWIFT gpi provides transparency over actors involved in the payments and also provides transparency over payments themselves. Detailed information about all the costs of the payment including the exchange rate costs can be accessed in the SWIFT gpi system.

Another part of the transparency is high traceability. This is needed for both informational purposes and improves security. With a Unique End-to-end Transaction Reference, (UETR) is created and shared with all the correspondent banks that are involved in the payment, every payment can not only be tracked in real-time but also can be traced back to its original source no matter how many banks were involved in the operation. Thanks to the commitment established between the banks taking part in SWIFT gpi, information regarding the payment is unchanged and homogeneous during the whole payment process. This makes it possible to identify the payment.

SWIFT gpi also lets financial institutions to stop the transaction process anywhere in the payment chain immediately in case of a red flag such as fraud or duplicate payments. Aside from being a good measure against fraud, this also prevents time-loss and operational costs due to making administrative cancellation requests.

The nature of international payments requires a significant amount of information to be delivered to all parties that are involved in the payment. SWIFT gpi system includes and standardizes this information which removes a whole phase handled by e-mailing or other types of communication which were slow, insecure and open to errors. Because of the standardization and transparency, SWIFT gpi provides a good measure against money laundering, fraud and many other types of financial crimes. And the usefulness of the SWIFT gpi system is self-evident in the high growth rate of the network in a short timespan.

Fineksus is one of the 7 regional partners for SWIFT and proud to be one of the fastest amongst SWIFT solution partners to adopt the new SWIFT gpi system.

Fineksus further improves its financial messaging products by adding SWIFT gpi features faster payments, end-to-end tracking of international wire transfers and fee transparency. Consequently, SWIFT gpi module increases operational productivity, improve costs effectiveness.

Fineksus PayGate has adopted the enhanced cross border payments service of SWIFT. Financial Institutions trusting Fineksus with their payment business are now part of the fast-growing gpi community that enjoys payment experience. Our SWIFT gpi compliant financial messaging solutions are:

PayGate™ Search: Financial message archiving and reporting tool for monitoring the status of the payment messages.

PayGate™ Maestro: Advanced financial messaging management system powered by flexible Business Rule Engine that creates SWIFT gpi-enabled payment messages and monitors the status of the payment messages.