Six of Spain’s largest banks have announced the incorporation of Swift’s global payments innovation (SWIFT gpi).
Banco Sabadell, Banco Santander, Bankinter, BBVA, Caixabank and Grupo Cooperativo Cajama (accounting for 85% of Spain’s cross-border payments) are all live on the payment service.
Juan Carlos Botrán, Head of SWIFT Iberia, expressed his pride and highlighted the “value” that gpi delivers to the financial industry.
He said: “We look forward to launching a series of new functionalities, including pre-validation and case resolution, and announcing the results of our proof of concept work linking SWIFT gpi to e-commerce and instant payments platforms.
“All of this will help us improve both the end client experience and processing efficiency even further. On behalf of SWIFT, I would like to thank all gpi banks, and especially the Spanish gpi banks, for leading the way in making gpi the new standard.”
SWIFT stated that more than $40trn were transferred over SWIFT gpi in 2018 and adoption saw the share of cross-border messages using gpi reach 56% by the end of the year, a year-on-year increase of 270%. More than 3,500 banks have committed to adopting gpi.
The firm aims to improve the customer experience in cross-border payments by prioritising their speed, transparency and end-to-end tracking.
In the announcement, representatives of the six Spanish banks spoke positively of the firm as it provides banks “significant improvement in the management of international payments,” according to Lorena González, Head of International Business, Grupo Cooperativo Cajamar.
González continued: “The transparency, speed and traceability that gpi brings into the payments ecosystem give answers to the questions that a client might ask after instructing a payment and demanding instant, easy and free of charge information – all of which has been unthinkable until now.
“The fact of giving information to clients in real time about where the funds are and when the beneficiary is credited, using traditional or digital channels, represents a significant step forward. We feel proud to be part of the “international payments revolution”, as we like to call it.”
