SWIFT, Eyeing International Settlements, Instantly In India

The growing traction of faster payments continues, especially across a cross-border backdrop.

In news reported by MoneyControl.com, SWIFT, the payments messaging giant, is reportedly looking at testing instant international settlements with local networks in India to speed transactions and make them more transparent.

As reported, the global payments innovation, also known as gpi, provides the cross border payments service to member banks within India. In the more recent example, the gpi instant platform will connect domestic switches in a manner that will connect non-gpi banks, too.

“After ensuring efficiency, transparency and trackability in cross-border payments, we are now connecting them to local networks. So, we are trying to integrate with local switches to complete the last leg of the transaction,” said Kiran Shetty, chief executive officer and regional head, India and South Asia, SWIFT, in a statement as reported by the site.

The “gpi instant” service has been tested with other platforms, including the New Payments Platform, which is in place in Australia. Elsewhere, that service has been tested with the Fast & Secure Transfers offering in Singapore and where the trial took place across 17 banks and seven countries. In India, that test would come through trials conducted through the National Corporation of India.

As quoted by the site, “We’ve had successful pilots in Singapore and Australia. The tests prove that cross-border to the final beneficiary can also happen within seconds. We are now looking to move into other real-time markets like India. We want to make sure that the value is derived at every level,” Shetty added.

In the trials mentioned above, settlement took place within 25 seconds.

In India 11 banks have signed up for the gpi network.

The gpi service is slated to go live, globally, by the end of the year, according to reports.

Separately, in other cross border news, MoolahGo said it would launch an enhanced application programming interfaces (APIs) integration platform.

As reported, the MoolahGo API lets stakeholders spanning software developers and enterprises to connect to the platform for cross border payments tied to 40 countries. The functions include authentication and exchange rate data.

“Our APIs have been developed with developers in mind, with clear documentation and sample codes in 3 different programming languages. The idea is to make it as plug-and-play as possible for software developers,” said Jodi Junan, chief systems engineer at MoolahGo in a statement.

MoolahGo said that in reference to security, the company has announced that it deploys tokenized authentication methodology and added that data exchanged through its APIs are encrypted.