GPI cross boarder payments trial is on

SWIFT announced that a group of banks are trialing instant gpi cross-border payments in Europe via the TARGET Instant Payments Settlement platform.

The banks participating in the pilot in Europe include Banque Internationale à Luxembourg, BBVA, Deutsche Bank, Natixis, Santander, Sberbank, and UniCredit.

The press release was prepared jointly with the European Central Bank and stated that the plan is ...

...to extend cross-border payments further into Europe by enabling gpi on the TIPS platform. Banks will settle cross-border payments through TIPS, allowing for instant crediting of accounts.

SWIFT noted that processing gpi cross-border payments instantly is the key to enabling ubiquitous availability of real-time cross-border payments. We all know that remittances is a real pain in the "..." in FinTech industry since still aren't happening in real time and are quite costly, especially for individuals, since in this case we are talking in a lot of cases about blue collars workers.

“This trial is another critical step in extending the reach and utility of our cross-border instant payments service. By linking SWIFT gpi and TIPS, our customers will be able to leverage their existing investments to deliver a superior service to their clients,” said Alain Raes, chief executive EMEA and Asia Pacific at SWIFT.

“The support we have from major European banks demonstrates their commitment to partnering with SWIFT to deliver a fast, secure and seamless cross-border real-time payment service that scales globally. We look forward to sharing the results of the pilot at Sibos in London in September.”

According to SWIFT, since it launched gpi in 2017 it has transformed the cross-border payments market, with an average of 40 percent of SWIFT gpi payments credited to those receiving it within five minutes. Still, payments can be delayed because they need to be cleared within the recipient’s country. Real-time payment systems like TIPS remove those frictions, ensuring payments can be credited nearly instantly.

“The support of the ECB to this initiative is in line with our strategic objective of ensuring that our TARGET Services keep pace with the evolving needs and requests of banks in the payment landscape. By facilitating gpi, TIPS proves its flexibility to cater to additional use cases. This shows how the 24/7 availability of central bank money provided by TIPS can open new possibilities for the market,” said Mehdi Manaa, deputy director general of market infrastructure and payments at the European Central Bank.

Worth to mention here - why not Blockchain? Or isn't Ripple solving the same problem? Why do we still need banks to move money around? Will full decentralisation became reality and solve that issue once for all? It is definitely possible firm technology point of view, not mention that cost here would be close to 0, and no delays would be happening.

To summarise: cheaper, faster, no third party involvement... Maybe instead of inventing the wheel we should think about opportunities which are already on the market and already proved their value.

Contributed | This content is contributed or sourced from third parties but has been subject to FTHours editorial review.