Standard Chartered Processes Real Time Remittance Payments to India within Seconds

Standard Chartered today announced that it has processed a remittance payment under the new retail payments scheme from Swift. In a world-first, Westpac (Australia) sent a transaction to India via Standard Chartered via this scheme. Leveraging its advanced capabilities in India, Standard Chartered enabled near real-time credit to the beneficiary bank, demonstrating a major leap in the country’s payment ecosystem.

This transaction was completed in 37 seconds end-to-end. This reiterates the Bank’s ability to complete an end-to-end transaction with any participating bank in India in record time using Swift rails. As well as the fastest possible settlement time, Swift’s retail payments scheme delivers benefits to both senders and receivers of international payments, including end-to-end transparency so that a payment can be tracked, upfront certainty of cost with no hidden fees, and no surprise FX deductions, so that the amount that is sent is exactly what lands in the beneficiary’s bank account.

At an event hosted by Swift in collaboration with the Indian Banks’ Association, focused on modernising payments, P D Singh, CEO, India & South Asia, Standard Chartered was felicitated to mark the achievement as the first bank in India to process a payment under the Swift scheme.

P D Singh, CEO, India & South Asia, at Standard Chartered, said, “Our cross-border and network capabilities have been the cornerstones of the Bank’s sharp focus across key markets including India. It is indeed a moment of great pride for Standard Chartered, India, to be globally the first bank to process a payment within seconds under Swift’s retail payment scheme. We’re enabling people all over the world to send money back to India just as easily as they can send money domestically.

With this initiative they will get a truly best-in-class payments experience backed by the security of the banking ecosystem, and we’re delighted to be working with the industry to make it possible,” Singh added.

Kiran Shetty, Chief Executive of Swift India and South Asia, said, “This demonstrates the power of Swift’s cutting-edge capabilities; leveraging its existing global rails to drive real transformation in cross-border payments. For India, the world’s largest recipient of remittances, where they play a significant role in GDP, this evolution is particularly critical.

By enabling greater speed, transparency, and an improved customer experience, bringing cross-border payments closer to the simplicity of domestic UPI; Swift is helping unlock a new standard for remittances. Standard Chartered Bank’s initiative is a strong proof point that this shift is not only possible, but already underway in India, with the potential to redefine how remittances are experienced. It is also highly encouraging to see the continued regulatory push in India supporting this direction, further accelerating the move towards a faster, more transparent, and customer-centric payments ecosystem anchored by Swift,” Shetty added.

SWIFT Launches SWIFT Go, A Fast, Cost-Effective Service for Low-Value Cross-Border Payments

New service enables businesses and consumers to send payments in seconds with full transparency and strong security

SWIFT Go is a key building block in the co-operative’s strategy to enable instant and frictionless cross-border transactions

Seven leading global banks already live with the service

India, 27 July 2021 – SWIFT today announces the launch of SWIFT Go, a transformative new service that enables small businesses and consumers to send fast, predictable, highly secure, and competitively priced low-value cross-border payments anywhere in the world, direct from their bank accounts. Seven global banks, which collectively handle 33 million low-value cross-border payments per year, are already live with the service.

SWIFT Go enables financial institutions to offer a seamless payments experience for low value transactions often initiated by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to pay suppliers overseas and by consumers sending money to friends and family internationally. Using tighter service level agreements between institutions and pre-validation of data, SWIFT Go enables banks to provide their end customers a fast and predictable payments experience with upfront visibility on processing times and costs.

The SWIFT Go service builds on the high-speed rails of SWIFT gpi, which have transformed the speed and predictability of high-value payments. The service marks another milestone in SWIFT’s strategy to enable instant and frictionless transactions from one account to another, across SWIFT’s network that connects more than 11,000 institutions, and 4 billion accounts across 200 countries worldwide. It will further strengthen the capabilities of banks to serve their customers in the high-growth small business and consumer payments segments.

Stephen Gilderdale, Chief Product Officer, at SWIFT said: “SWIFT Go is a further step towards achieving our vision of enabling anybody, anywhere, to send money instantly and securely around the world. The new service is a direct response to the needs of small businesses and consumers for fast, easy, predictable, secure and competitively priced cross-border payments. Our new service will allow banks to compete effectively in one of the fastest growing segments of the payments market, delivering a seamless experience for their customers."

SWIFT Go was developed in close collaboration with the global SWIFT community and is underpinned by several key pillars:

• Speed: Tighter service levels between banks increase speed. A single payment format increases straight-through processing, while services such as pre-validation remove frictions that cause delays.
• Predictability: The amount, time, fees and FX rate of a payment are known in advance. The sender and receiver of a payment can track the status in real-time.
• Easy to use: The user experience is simple and streamlined, with data requirements known upfront. Strict network validation provides for easy initiation and processing of SWIFT Go payments
• Competitive prices: Processing fees are agreed between financial institutions upfront so they can provide their customers with full transparency; increased straight-through processing further reduces processing costs.
• Security: Senders and receivers have peace of mind that payments are underpinned by the strong security of the SWIFT network.

Seven leading global banks are now using SWIFT Go live: BBVA; Bank of New York Mellon; DNB; MYBank; Sberbank; Société Générale, and UniCredit.

Raouf Soussi, Head of Enterprise Payments Strategy of Client Solutions, BBVA said: “BBVA is very excited to be one of the first banks to sign up to SWIFT Go and we recognise the potential of this solution to revolutionise the way SMEs and consumers move money around the world. We have listened closely to our customers and we know how much they value a secure service that ensures payments reach their destination quickly and seamlessly."

Isabel Schmidt, Head of Direct Clearing and Asset Account Services Products, Bank of New York Mellon said: “It’s no secret that for many years consumers and small businesses have been running into varying pain points when transacting international payments. These challenges have included opaque costs and lack of certainty on how quickly funds are delivered to the final beneficiary. This is why BNY Mellon is pleased to be the first US bank to go live with SWIFT Go, a new service that overcomes all of these challenges and assists financial institutions in delivering a competitive, seamless, fast and predictable payments experience to their customers."

Feng Liang, Deputy CEO, MYBank said: “SWIFT gpi has become the benchmark for high-value cross-border transactions and we are confident that SWIFT Go will be equally as transformative for SME payments. By providing for instant, seamless transactions within one of the highest growth areas of our industry, we expect that adoption of SWIFT Go will be widespread and that it will quickly be established as the industry standard for lower value transactions."

Jean-François Mazure, Head of Cash Clearing and Correspondent Banking, Société Générale said: “As customer expectations for faster payments evolve, the correspondent banking industry requires a solution to more competitively process SME and consumer payments. SWIFT Go fits perfectly with it, allowing us to provide an outstanding experience to our customers with predictable, seamless, and frictionless low-value cross-border transactions reaching beneficiaries accounts quicker than ever."

Raphael Barisaac, Global Head of Cash Management, Global Co-Head of Trade, UniCredit said: “UniCredit has long been a keen supporter of innovations within payments that deliver excellent outcomes for end-customers, and as such we are very proud of our involvement in SWIFT Go. This is a service that will lead to real benefits for SMEs and consumers, allowing them to enjoy the speed, predictability and transparency that SWIFT gpi has brought to high-value transactions.”