SWIFT gets into Fintech territory, to enable instant retail cross-border transfers

Mumbai: More than five decades after it was set up to carry secure financial messages between banks across borders, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) is stepping into territory increasingly dominated by fintech firms. The Brussels-based cooperative, founded in 1973 by a consortium of banks to standardise cross-border payment messaging, has unveiled a new framework aimed at making international retail transfers faster, cheaper and more predictable.
Indian lenders State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank are among those first to participate. In the first phase, customers will be able to send money from India to major economies including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and Germany.
More than 25 banks globally are expected to begin processing payments under the new rules by the end of June. Transfers across key remittance corridors—including Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Germany, India, Pakistan, Spain, Thailand, the UK and the US—will come with fixed upfront costs, full-value delivery and end-to-end tracking. Where domestic payment infrastructure allows, transfers could also settle instantly.
At present, about three-fourths of payments routed through Swift already reach the recipient bank within 10 minutes, which is faster than the targets set by the Group of Twenty (G20). However, the overall customer experience can still be uneven. Delays often occur at the start and end of the payment chain when local banking systems take over. The new framework seeks to address these gaps by setting common rules that improve transparency on fees and delivery times.
The move is part of Swift’s broader strategy to retain its central role in global finance as payment technologies evolve. Fintech firms have made rapid gains by offering near-instant cross-border transfers with transparent pricing, pushing banks and legacy infrastructure providers to adapt.
Swift’s response is a two-track strategy which involves tightening standards for traditional cross-border payments while also preparing for the next phase of financial infrastructure. Alongside the retail payments framework, it is developing a blockchain-based shared ledger that could enable round-the-clock cross-border transfers of tokenised assets across its network of more than 11,000 financial institutions spanning over 200 countries and territories.