DBS Bank has launched real-time online tracking of cross-border collections to provide greater digital convenience to its corporate clients. Powered by Swift Global Payments Innovation (gpi), more than 240,000 DBS corporate and SME clients in Singapore and Hong Kong will be the first to benefit from the service with no additional fee, the bank said in a statement.

Raof Latiff, head of digital for institutional banking at the bank, says the real-time tracking service, the first to be launched in Asia, will help clients improve their working capital management and foster trust with overseas counterparties. “This in turn helps improve supply chain efficiencies and encourages economic growth, enabling countries to bounce back faster from the pandemic,” he adds.

Traditionally, the tracking of cross-border collections is done manually for the most part. Corporates often rely on a copy of Swift message from the remitter, which confirms their remittance instruction has been processed by their bank. For updates, corporates have to depend on their bank or the remitter (via remitter’s bank) to find out the latest status of the transfer across multiple banks, a process which is tedious, costly and time-consuming.

With the DBS Swift gpi solution, all corporates need to do is to log into the bank’s online corporate banking portal, DBS IDEAL, to receive instant updates on where the incoming funds are in the cross-border payment chain, the bank explains.

In markets where regulations require additional information or supporting documents for cross-border transfers, corporates can use DBS DigiDocs to transmit information and supporting documents digitally and instantly, thereby reducing the need for paper-intensive processes. This solution is currently available in China, India, Vietnam, and is expected to be launched in Indonesia and Taiwan over the next few months.

Following the launch of the online cross-border collections solution in Singapore and Hong Kong, DBS targets to expand the offering to its other core markets comprising China, India, Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam in the coming months.