Widespread adoption of its global payments innovation service, launched two years ago, has contributed to a record year for SWIFT, which has seen message volumes grow by 56 percent in the past five years.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) saw 11.3 percent growth in its message volume in 2018, or an average of 31.13 million messages a day, and a record annual traffic of 7.8 billion messages during the year, the financial services firm said Thursday in a press release.
SWIFT cited «mass adoption» of the SWIFT global payments innovation (GPI) service, which now accounts for 55 percent of cross-border payment instructions carried on the network, and about $300 billion in transfers daily.
The success of SWIFT GPI and its rapid adoption has played a key part in our increased annual message traffic, with well over a million payments a day now passing over GPI,” SWIFT CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt said.
SWIFT launched its GPI service in 2017 to increase the speed, transparency and tracking of cross-border payments. It currently remains optional for banks but its ambition is to create a new standard in cross-border payments.
