During 2018, with the support of hundreds of financial institutions, including the world's 60 biggest banks, SWIFT gpi payments is now being used to send hundreds of billions in payments every day – more than half (55%) of SWIFT's cross-border traffic.

Luc Meurant, chief marketing officer at SWIFT, says: "Through gpi, SWIFT and its community have managed to radically innovate the very core of correspondent banking, in what has been the biggest innovation in SWIFT's 40-year history."

Underlying the rapid uptake of the system, the speed, transparency and traceability of cross-border payments has undoubtedly improved, with SWIFT gpi payments typically made within minutes or even seconds. Overall, over 50% of SWIFT gpi payments are credited to end beneficiaries within 30 minutes, and almost 100% of payments within 24 hours. Payments that take longer typically have clear known reasons, such as being subject to payment regulations in the receiving country.

"The increased speed offered by gpi benefits banks as well as their end customers", adds Meurant. "For banks, it helps to reduce the capital requirements needed to support international payments, while for banks' end customers it frees up cash and enables goods to move faster. The transparency it enables not only reduces the total number of enquiries, but also the time needed to handle those that are left."

Global adoption ramped up throughout the year, as major banks from all across the world joined the service. The rapid take up of the gpi service led to SWIFT's announcement in June that it would move to universal gpi adoption by the end of 2020. By then, all 10,000 banks on the SWIFT network will be able to offer same day end-to-end delivery with full tracking and transparency throughout the payment chain.

In addition, SWIFT announced a number of developments and enhancements to the service during the year:

· Unique identification mechanism

The extension of the UETR represented a major step forward, significantly extending transparency by allowing users to track all payments, whether or not the counterparty has joined gpi, and driving more banks to join the service.

· Tracking capability extended to full network

From 2019, all banks on the SWIFT network – not just those signed up to gpi – will be able to trace, and have visibility over their payment activity. The rollout will prepare the entire industry for universal gpi adoption by the end of 2020.

· Integration with domestic payment systems

SWIFT has worked with most major domestic high value payment systems to ensure that gpi payments can be tracked through nearly 100 domestic systems across the world, including the systems in all the largest economies.

· Instant cross-border payments

Working with banks in Australia, China, Thailand and Singapore, a pilot project demonstrated that by leveraging gpi and gpi banks to inter-connect real-time domestic systems, cross-border payments can be implemented almost instantly – even when they involve domestic settlement and non-gpi banks.

· Payment pre-validation capability

SWIFT announced the pilot of an API-enabled integrated pre-validation gpi service to enable the speedy identification and elimination of issues in payment messages. The pilot is the first stage in the rollout of an ambitious gpi validation programme, which will also look at using predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to improve the predictability of international payments.

· Multi-bank tracking solution for corporates

SWIFT launched gpi for Corporates (g4C) – a multi-bank payments tracking solution that allows corporates to gain real-time, end-to-end views on their cross-border payments flows. The new service enables banks to provide gpi information to their corporate clients in a standardized way, thus allowing them to initiate and track their gpi payments to and from multiple banks in a single format and integrate it into their back offices, achieving efficiency and transparency with automated end-to-end flows.

· Improved business intelligence

SWIFT debuted a new Business Intelligence gpi Observer Analytics tool giving banks more comprehensive insights into their gpi traffic flows. The market and competitive analysis that gpi Observer Analytics provides allows financial institutions to act on reliable data enabling them to optimize their payment routings, steer their cross-border payment strategies and fine-tune their Service Level Agreements.