HSBC: “SWIFT gpi is a natural step for us”

On Tuesday (April 24th) HSBC announced they had gone live with SWIFT’s global payments innovation (gpi) service.

There are currently 160 financial institutions committed to SWIFT gpi, with HSBC becoming one of nearly 50 live on the service.

“SWIFT gpi is one of the most exciting developments in the payments industry globally, greatly enhancing the way in which cross border payments are tracked and made visible to clients.” Tom Halpin, Global Head of Payment Products, Global Liquidity & Cash Management at HSBC told PaymentEye.

“It represents an opportunity to support and empower our customers with an improved cross-border payments experience, leveraging HSBC’s and SWIFT’s global networks.”

Overall, nearly 50% of SWIFT gpi payments are credited within 30 minutes and over 90% of payments within 24 hours. Those that take longer do so for a clear, known reason – such as extra compliance checks, complex foreign exchange conversions, or regulatory authorisations.

SWIFT gpi enables banks’ customers to track the status of a payment in real-time via an innovative cloud-based tracker system, and provides an unprecedented level of visibility into each payment, including information about each bank in its path and any fees that have been deducted.

“HSBC is already a global member of SWIFT, and the implementation of SWIFT gpi is a natural step for us, improving our existing capabilities and bringing immediate benefits to our clients including enhanced speed, certainty, transparency and credit confirmation,” Halpin continued.

“Having yet another of the world’s largest banking and financial organisations go live with SWIFT gpi is a testament to the service, which is quickly becoming the gold standard for international payments, “Stephen Grainger, Head of UK, Ireland and Nordics at SWIFT, said.

“We have seen a rapid surge in both adoption rates and the number of transactions on SWIFT gpi and continue to add new banks and country corridors almost daily as we expand our coverage across institutions, markets and geographies.”

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