SWIFT to eliminate frictions in international payments

SWIFT today announced the go-live of a service that will enable banks to verify payee account details before an international payment is sent, removing a key point of friction in cross-border transactions. The new Payment Pre-validation service is a core building block in SWIFT’s strategy to drive instant and frictionless transactions worldwide.

Most cross-border payments are processed without issue, but one of the leading causes for those that fail or lose time is incorrect beneficiary information – from misspelled names to transposed account numbers. And because they are detected late in the process, these issues can be among the most time-consuming and costly to resolve. SWIFT’s Payment Pre-validation service tackles this problem by allowing a sending bank to confirm account details, via an API, with the receiving bank from the very beginning of the process so that any data or account problems are identified right up front. This check is similar to what already occurs in some domestic markets except the SWIFT service will go much further — solving the issue for up to 11,000 institutions and 4 billion accounts in 200 countries.

SWIFT developed the Payment Pre-validation service in close cooperation with financial institutions, and a number of major global banks have already signalled their commitment to the service. SWIFT plans to continue innovating the service, and over the coming months will offer additional checks based on reference data encompassing millions of transactions to further predict, at the point of initiation, when a transaction may potentially run into friction points along the way.

Over the next two years and beyond, SWIFT is transforming its platform to enable instant and frictionless payments anywhere in the world, aiming to significantly improve end-to-end efficiency, reduce total costs, and to create services that equip financial institutions to capture growth and create new, differentiated customer experiences. Payment Pre-validation is one of many such services to come that will support the first platform release in November 2022.

Stephen Gilderdale, Chief Product Officer, SWIFT said, “SWIFT’s strategy to enable fast and frictionless payments takes a major step forward with the launch of this service. Payment Pre-validation will bring end-to-end efficiency, enabling our customers to provide better, faster and new services to their own end clients.”