- Networks to collaborate to break down barriers in cross-border payments
- Strengthen efforts to keep financial ecosystem connected in a fragmented world
- Set foundation to enable fast, frictionless movement of funds
Toronto, 19 September 2023 – Visa and Swift today announced a collaboration to streamline international business-to-business (B2B) payments by strengthening connectivity between their networks that move trillions in value globally. Working together, the organizations aim to provide financial institutions and their customers with more choice when sending money across borders, while improving the end-to-end speed and transparency of their transactions.
As part of the joint effort, announced in Toronto at the annual Sibos conference, Visa will deploy capabilities developed by Swift that can help increase the speed and certainty of cross-border money movement. This includes Swift Payment Pre-validation to enable upfront checks of Visa B2B Connect payments, reducing unnecessary delays by catching potential errors before the payment is initiated. Additionally, the networks plan to work together to increase end-to-end transaction visibility by using high-speed Swift GPI capabilities and tracking data. Visa will migrate its connection to Swift through Alliance Cloud, a scalable, secure cloud-based channel for connecting to Swift’s network, as well as messaging services, standards and solutions.
Through this collaboration, financial institutions on both networks will have more routing options for their business customers, with real-time status and updates. In a world facing increased fragmentation, these efforts advance the goals of both organizations to keep the world’s financial infrastructure connected with the right levels of security, resiliency, reliability and compliance.
Chris Newkirk, Global Head of Commercial & Money Movement Solutions at Visa said: "Many businesses continue to face complexities while making cross-border payments that hurt their bottom lines. By working with Swift, Visa will help enhance our financial institution clients’ offerings to their corporate customers. The collaboration will help provide clarity and enhanced data, while removing errors before, during and after the payment.”
Thierry Chilosi, Chief Strategy Officer at Swift commented: “Expectations for international payments are rising as the complexity of moving money across borders is intensifying. Our work with Visa helps address both challenges, providing new connectivity and capabilities in the backend to drive exciting innovation in front-end customer channels. It’s part of our strategic focus on payment optionality, enabling value in all forms to move seamlessly around the world with strong peace of mind on security and trust and, through collaborations like this, consistently elevating the customer experience.”
Swift provides best-in-class infrastructure with unrivalled reach, transparency, security, and trust — infrastructure that interoperates seamlessly across geographies, networks and technologies while neutrally supporting fiat or digital currencies. It supports an inclusive and sustainable global finance system, securely interconnecting more than 11,500 institutions across more than 200 countries and territories to move the equivalent of world GDP roughly every three days. Through strong focus on innovation, and aligned with G20 goals, it is consistently raising the bar on the cross-border experience with advanced capabilities that remove friction, accelerate speed and increase security and transparency.
Visa B2B Connect is an innovative cross-border B2B payments solution for businesses worldwide. Built upon Visa's extensive global network and fortified by advanced security technology, Visa B2B Connect empowers businesses to seamlessly authenticate and manage cross-border B2B payments. By offering real-time visibility, expedited payment processing, and robust monitoring capabilities, the platform sets new standards for efficiency, transparency and security. Since October 2022, Visa B2B Connect has welcomed over 30 bank clients in more than 20 countries, and payments have been routed to 90 countries globally.
About Visa
Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.
About Swift
Swift is a global member owned cooperative and the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services. We provide our community with a platform for messaging and standards for communicating, and we offer products and services to facilitate access and integration, identification, analysis and regulatory compliance.
Our messaging platform, products and services connect more than 11,500 banking and securities organisations, market infrastructures and corporate customers in more than 200 countries and territories. While Swift does not hold funds or manage accounts on behalf of customers, we enable our global community of users to communicate securely, exchanging standardised financial messages in a reliable way, thereby supporting global and local financial flows, as well as trade and commerce all around the world.
As their trusted provider, we relentlessly pursue operational excellence; we support our community in addressing cyber threats; and we continually seek ways to lower costs, reduce risks and eliminate operational inefficiencies. Our products and services support our community’s access and integration, business intelligence, reference data and financial crime compliance needs. Swift also brings the financial community together – at global, regional and local levels – to shape market practice, define standards and debate issues of mutual interest or concern.
Headquartered in Belgium, Swift’s international governance and oversight reinforces the neutral, global character of its cooperative structure. Swift’s global office network ensures an active presence in all the major financial centres.
Press Contacts:
Visa
Aida Hadzibegovic
ahadzibe@visa.com
650-421-5169
Swift
FGS Global
+32 (0)2655 3377
Swift@fgsglobal.com
