Swift and several international banks have successfully completed the first pilot to process, in a real environment, instant payments between different currency areas.
Iberpay and leading Spanish banks such as BBVA, Santander and CaixaBank have carried out the first test of this pioneering service in Europe in anticipation of the official entry into force, on November 28th, of the new One-Leg-Out Instant Credit Transfer (OCT Inst) scheme of the European Payment Council (EPC).
During this pilot phase of the service, dozens of actual payments originating from banks in other currency areas (National Australia Bank, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, Itaú Unibanco in Brazil and Lloyds Banking Group in the UK) and sent through the Swift GPI Instant service have been processed, settled, and credited in a matter of seconds to the ultimate beneficiary customer's account.
This pilot initiative included, as a world first, the integration of Spanish payment processor Iberpay's instant transfer platform, which operates 24/7 in real time, with Swift's GPI tracker, providing end-to-end visibility of payment status and greater transaction transparency.
BBVA states: "Some of the main advantages of this initiative include the possibility of processing international payments 24/7 within seconds and end-to-end payment traceability. All of this allows us to improve the customer's user experience, offer new use cases and develop innovative services that compete with new players in this payment sector."