Swift has partnered with global tech company Wise to allow secure Swift transfers to be completed over Wise with full transparency for financial institutions and their customers.
Via this partnership, financial institutions will be able to route Swift payment messages directly to Wise Platform – Wise’s infrastructure solution for banks and major enterprises — through its Correspondent Services solution. This will enable their customers to benefit from the speed and convenience of Wise, and the breadth of Swift without needing to implement any major changes to their systems.
Seamless cross-border payments with full transparency
Wise Platform will harness advanced Swift capabilities to power its service, including cloud and API connectivity and Payment Pre-validation and will continue to offer banks all the features of Swift GPI, including a payment status tracker which Wise Platform will update to ensure end-to-end view across both networks.
The collaboration is the start of a broader relationship and comes as increased innovation and fragmentation in the financial ecosystem is creating more ways for money to move — and more consumer demand for choice. It reflects the importance of new forms of collaboration to provide optionality, while maintaining secure, reliable, and inclusive connectivity. And it is directly aligned with both G20 and UN Sustainable Development goals on the speed, transparency, cost, and access of cross-border transactions.
Easy configuration to unlock the benefits of the partnership
Wise’s global payments network enables over 57% of customers’ cross-border payments to settle instantly (in under 20 seconds), and over 90% to settle in under an hour. By leveraging Wise Platform’s Correspondent Services solution, financial institutions only need to make one simple configuration change and their customers will instantly benefit from faster, lower-cost and more convenient international payments.
Officials from Wise said they know that banks face a number of challenges when it comes to enhancing their international payments, including that this often requires them to embed technology which is incompatible with legacy infrastructure. By simultaneously leveraging existing payments architecture and optimising payouts using Wise’s global network, they are enabling banks to innovate. Their network, combined with Swift’s extensive reach and trackability, will make international payments more convenient, faster, and lower cost for banks.
Representatives from Swift added that they have built an infrastructure that connects the world, is trusted, and relied upon every day. Their collaboration with Wise illustrates how Swift can be the bedrock from which the whole industry can innovate to improve cross-border payments and enhance the options available for customers across the globe. Cooperation such as this will be vital in the efforts to achieve the G20 targets for cross-border payments and enable the seamless, efficient, and secure movement of value around a fragmented world.