Menu

SWIFT, a global member owned cooperative and the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services, last month, announced the launch of SWIFT Go, a new service that enables small businesses and consumers to send fast, predictable, secure, and competitively priced low-value cross-border payments anywhere in the world, direct from their bank accounts.

According to a statement sent to Financial Nigeria by SWIFT, seven global banks, which collectively handle 33 million low-value cross-border payments per year, were already live on the service as of the 27th of July 2021.

SWIFT Go enables financial institutions to offer a seamless payments experience for low value transactions often initiated by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to pay suppliers overseas and by consumers sending money to friends and family internationally. Using tighter service level agreements between institutions and pre-validation of data, SWIFT Go enables banks to provide their end customers a fast and predictable payments experience with upfront visibility on processing times and costs.

The service marks another milestone in SWIFT’s strategy to enable instant and frictionless transactions from one account to another, across SWIFT’s network that connects more than 11,000 institutions, and 4 billion accounts across 200 countries worldwide, SWIFT said.

“SWIFT Go is a further step towards achieving our vision of enabling anybody, anywhere, to send money instantly and securely around the world,” said Stephen Gilderdale, Chief Product Officer, at SWIFT. “The new service is a direct response to the needs of small businesses and consumers for fast, easy, predictable, secure and competitively priced cross-border payments. Our new service will allow banks to compete effectively in one of the fastest growing segments of the payments market, delivering a seamless experience for their customers.”

SWIFT Go was developed in close collaboration with the global SWIFT community and is underpinned by several key pillars of speed, predictability, easy to use and competitive prices, and security.

The seven leading global banks that have started using SWIFT Go are BBVA, Bank of New York Mellon, DNB, MYBank, Sberbank, Société Générale, and UniCredit.

Raouf Soussi, Head of Enterprise Payments Strategy of Client Solutions, BBVA said: “BBVA is very excited to be one of the first banks to sign up to SWIFT Go and we recognise the potential of this solution to revolutionise the way SMEs and consumers move money around the world. We have listened closely to our customers and we know how much they value a secure service that ensures payments reach their destination quickly and seamlessly."

Headquartered in Belgium, SWIFT’s international governance and oversight reinforces the neutral, global character of its cooperative structure. SWIFT’s global office network ensures an active presence in all the major financial centres.