The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) is preparing to launch a new global platform for person-to-person payments. According to Swift, the solution, called SwiftRemit, connects to banks, money transfer operators and other types of supervised payment institutions over its network.
“Swift Remit offers our customers a unique opportunity to offer a competitive product in the global retail payments market,” said Gottfried Leibbrandt, head of marketing at Swift. “A lack of interoperability and consistent quality standards among existing systems is holding back growth.”
Leibbrandt says the new platform will provide a brand-neutral solution that institutions can customise in line with their specific customer demands.
SwiftRemit will help its users provide better customer service in the form of additional flexibility and cost and time transparency, says Swift. Money transfers can be conducted with cash and made to accounts, cards and even cheques with the solution. In addition, the solution will provide a mobile friendly service for mobile instructed payments, notifications and payouts including payments to mobile wallets.
US-based global money transfer company MoneyGram announced that it will be implementing SwiftRemit at Swift’s Sibos conference in Toronto this year. “MoneyGram’s product strategy is to deliver a choice of transaction methods that are secure, convenient and economic for our customers,” said Paul Thomas, direct of global strategic partnerships at MoneyGram International. When the partnership is finalised, SwiftRemit members will have access to MoneyGram’s network of 244,000 agent locations in 192 countries globally.
