SWIFT Adds BELLIN To gpi For Corporates Initiative

Cross-Border Payments Look To Blockchain, Beyond

Payments messaging company SWIFT is expanding its gpi for Corporates (g4C) initiative, adding treasury management technology company BELLIN to its roster of early adopters of the tool. In a press release issued Wednesday (Jan. 23), BELLIN revealed it is joining the g4C effort, which enables banks to provide gpi data to their corporate clients, heightening transparency and traceability of corporate cross-border transactions.

The collaboration will see BELLIN and other early adopters testing the g4C functionality using SWIFT FIN messages, a type of payments messaging standard that enables the movement of data between financial institutions (FIs). The companies expect to release g4C to all BELLIN customers in April of this year, which will allow FI customers of BELLIN to register their SWIFT business identifier code (BIC) with the g4C solution. BELLIN is integrating g4C into its tm5 treasury management system.

Customers onboarded to the solution can obtain a unique end-to-end transaction reference (UETR) for gpi payments for heightened tracking of a transaction. More than 280 banks across more than 200 countries are slated to launch their g4C operations in the future, SWIFT said, though it did not offer details on when the service will go live.

“BELLIN and SWIFT share a passion for technology and the development of services that are inspired by customer requirements,” said BELLIN Product Manager of Solution Management Karsten Kiefer in a statement. “With some of our customers piloting the solution, we’re proud to make it available to all of our 150 BELLIN SWIFT Service customers soon, enabling them to process payments as SWIFT gpi payments: fast, traceable and transparent.”

Payment tracking is a key focus for SWIFT, which has been gradually expanding this functionality for FIs via its gpi Tracker tool, launched in 2017. The tool expanded and began requiring SWIFT customers to include their UETR in all payment instructions, even for institutions not part of gpi. As a result, members of SWIFT gpi can gain automated updates to payment status and movement using that UETR information.