Shaping the future of payments and securities: Faster, Smarter, Better

By the end of 2019, 65% of cross-border and intergroup payments were sent using gpi  – representing nearly $77 trillion in annual value – as the number of live gpi country corridors nearly doubled to 1,939. Not only has gpi significantly accelerated cross-border payments, it has proven to be a success story of collective action. 

In September 2019, we launched a new service to deliver global instant payments by integrating gpi with domestic instant payments systems around the world, based on real-time service levels. This built on other successes in real-time payments, including the development of the New Payments Platform in Australia and access to European Instant Payments. 

Securities messaging accounts for a significant portion of our traffic. We have built on the success of T2S to expand reach into new markets, rolled out gpi for Financial Institutions Transfer Service and co-created use cases for APIs with our customers. 

APIs are an essential enabler for a growing number of our services, offering a powerful way for the community to interact with Swift in faster and more transparent ways. We now have a state-of-the-art API infrastructure that handled nearly 1 billion calls in 2019. 

We have conducted proofs of concepts for fraud detection and network dynamics analysis to support innovation – including machine learning and artificial intelligence – in our financial crime compliance and fraud prevention capabilities. We also further expanded our business intelligence portfolio to provide broader and deeper insights.

We have rolled out shared services for sanctions screening of transactions and client lists, KYC and anti-fraud payment controls to enable our customers to more easily meet their transaction regulatory compliance requirements.

By putting in place mandatory security controls and facilitating information exchange, the Customer Security Programme has reinforced the security of the entire global banking system.

Swift Insights