SWIFT is ready to launch a demo of its GPI blockchain for the banking system

This week the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Channels SWIFT announced its readiness to launch a demonstration version of the Global Payment Initiative (GPI) aimed at maintaining the organization’s status in the context of the proliferation of alternative blockchain solutions for organizing communication between financial institutions, including the proposed Ripple and JPMorgan. He writes about CCN .

The GPI project is still in the early stages of development and aims to:

“Creating a basis for a new integrated and interactive service that will significantly reduce the inefficiencies in the payment process and ultimately make the SWIFT network accessible to all 10,000 banks.”

In October, successful GPI tests were carried out to perform instant cross-border transfers between banks in China, Singapore, Thailand and Australia. It is assumed that the GPI system will speed up the identification of participants in the process and reduce the number of errors in transferring payment information, together with which the costs and waiting time associated with the transfer of such transactions will decrease, and the quality of customer service will also improve.

The development of a new SWIFT solution is being conducted against the backdrop of entering the market for alternative services on the blockchain, which offer the same services at lower costs. For example, JPMorgan Bank launched the Interbank Information Network (IIN) in September, which currently has 130 participants, including Satander and Societe Generale.

JPMorgan states that IIN is able to optimize the transfer of international payments, so that they will reach their recipients faster and in fewer steps. The bank sees the solution to existing problems in the use of distributed registry technology.

SWIFT GPI, on the other hand, uses an application programming interface (API), which allows banks to access each other’s data and validate payment information until the payment is sent, so that they can avoid errors and delays.

“The service is fully integrated with GPI payments and allows real-time dynamic interbank interaction to increase the predictability and efficiency of international payments. In the future, it will be complemented by post-payment analysis and dispute resolution tools, which will take into account other factors usually arising from the need to comply with regulatory requirements or the law, which can also slow down payment processes, ”the GPI description says.

The pilot version of GPI will be launched in early 2019 with the participation of 14 banks, including JP Morgan, Barclays, Bank of China and CitiGroup. According to SWIFT, the service will provide complete transparency with regards to recipients and senders of transactions, due to which the cost, routes and delivery of funds will become easily predictable.