The June scheme already includes more than 100 banks
International money transfers could be made using phone numbers, email addresses and other aliases instead of bank account details under a new cross-border payments project led by Swift.
Swift is linking domestic payment systems including Bizum in Spain, PayID from Australian Payments Plus in Australia and Pix in Brazil with banks, payment service providers and technology providers from four continents.
Consumers would be able to send money to friends’ and family members’ accounts internationally using pay-by-alias identifiers already used in local systems. Those identifiers include mobile phone numbers, email addresses and virtual payment addresses.
The company plans to securely match those familiar identifiers for international transactions over the Swift network. The work is the next step in Swift’s consumer payments scheme.
Swift launched that framework in June. It now involves more than 100 banks and aims to improve the end-to-end payment experience through full-value transfer, greater predictability and the fastest possible settlement at global scale.
Across the wider network, 75% of payments over Swift now reach the receiving bank within 10 minutes and often in seconds. As a result, the new project focuses on the front end of the transaction, where senders still often need account details for overseas payments.
Juan Martinez, managing director of Swift’s payments platform, said: “We’re on a mission to make sending money abroad as simple as sending it at home.”
Banks and payment groups join trial
Participating organisations include Australian Payments Plus, Banco de Crédito del Perú, Banorte, BBVA, Bizum, Bradesco, Caixabank, Citizens Bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, DBS, IDFC FIRST Bank, Ouribank, TerraPay and Veritran.
The group includes banks, a domestic payments operator and technology companies. It also brings together organisations that already handle retail payments in several markets.
For Australian users, PayID already lets people send money with a mobile number or email address rather than a bank account number. AP+ chief executive Lynn Kraus said extending that model to cross-border payments would be an important step for Australian consumers.
If the work succeeds, consumers could use familiar domestic payment habits to send money abroad through institutions already taking part in Swift’s consumer payments scheme.
