Banks, Global trends, HotnewsNovember 13, 2017

Deutsche Bank goes live with Swift gpi

Intransparent deducts will soon be nothing more than a distant memory now that the reach of SWIFT’s global payments innovation (gpi) has moved nearer to being the new normal

SWIFT gpi is a new standard in cross-border payments which aims to make them faster and more transparent. Payments sent using this new standard carry remittance information unaltered while funds are available the same day. The service also provides transparency over bank fees and end-to-end tracking.

On 6 November 2017, Deutsche Bank went live with its EUR gpi services and this follows the successful introduction of USD gpi services in October.
Trackable real-time cross-border payments

Connecting all parties in the payment chain via a cloud solution, the SWIFT gpi architecture has, to date, attracted more than 100 banks from Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Americas. Deutsche Bank is one of an increasing number of banks going live on this journey towards trackable real-time cross-border payments – by the end of 2017 SWIFT estimates this to number 24 (see SWIFT’s update gpi presentation here). The bank now processes its corporate and financial institutions cross-border payments for both EUR and USD via this new service offering – the world’s two major currencies.

Corporates do not have to make changes to their operations to connect to SWIFT gpi and simply get the service added in – either via the bank’s Cash Inquiry app or by speaking to customer services officers who can access the relevant information.
30 minutes end to end

Commenting on the introduction of its gpi services Michael Spiegel, Head of Cash Management and Head of Global Transaction Banking Germany states, “gpi is the new blueprint in international payments addressing the real needs of clients globally. Initial feedback has shown that many transactions between continents are processed end to end and with full tracking capabilities in less than 30 minutes.”

At a Sibos Toronto 2017 session entitled ‘If correspondent banking is not the future – what is?’ Deutsche Bank’s Head of Clearing Products, Cash Management Christian Westerhaus explained how that with SWIFT gpi “you have the opportunity to send the payments via the SWIFT network and use the new cloud-based tracker by an API (application programming interface), which we did as one of the first banks using this. We have examples of payments from China to Australia via USD clearing – we did one last week, 30 minutes from end to end.”