The operator of the international interbank information transfer system Swift and several international banks have successfully completed the first pilot project for real-world processing of instant payments between different currency areas.
Source:https://ibsintelligence.com/ibsi-news/swift-iberpay-pilot-instant-payments-across-currency-zones/
Iberpay and leading Spanish banks BBVA, Santander and CaixaBank conducted the first European test of the innovative service ahead of the European Payments Council’s (EPC’s) One-Leg-Out Instant Credit Transfer (OCT Inst) scheme that officially went into effect on November 28.
During the pilot phase of this service, dozens of real-world payments originating from banks in other currency areas (National Australia Bank, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, Itaú Unibanco in Brazil and Lloyds Banking Group in the UK) and sent via the Swift GPI Instant service were processed, settled and credited to the account of the final recipient customer in a matter of seconds.
As part of this pilot initiative, for the first time in the world, the instant transfer platform of the 24/7 real-time Spanish payment processor Iberpay was integrated with Swift’s GPI tracker, which provides end-to-end control over the status of the payment and greater transparency of transactions.
“Among the main benefits of this initiative are the ability to process international payments 24/7 within seconds and end-to-end payment tracking. All this allows us to improve the customer experience, offer new use cases and develop innovative services that compete with new players in this payments sector,” said BBVA.