The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications ( Swift ), a secure messaging network for the global banking system, and its participant banks, will introduce new network rules to ensure a consistently fast and predictable experience for consumers and small businesses sending money anywhere in the world.

The Swift platform is developing the new rules with a voluntary coalition of over 30 early adopter banks to provide retail customers with the peace of mind and predictability they expect when sending money internationally.

The rules will ensure upfront transparency on payment costs, guaranteed full value delivery, end-to-end visibility and a commitment to instant settlement where available.

Financial institutions, Swift explains, will leverage the advanced capabilities on its platform – typically used for wholesale payments – to enhance cross-border retail payments. Recent upgrades have significantly improved the experience, enabling fully transparent transfers that exceed G20 targets, with 75% of payments reaching beneficiary banks within 10 minutes.

Initiatives like Swift Go and experience benchmarking have already benefited consumer channels, and the scheme will further extend the advantages to 4 billion accounts in over 200 countries. 

The work advances the 2027 G20 Roadmap for cross-border payments, which Swift has made a strategic priority. It has made strong progress in the “in-flight” cross-border leg, and it has also been doing additional work to help remove friction in end-to-end transaction chains. It has put considerable focus on the domestic “last mile” leg to help move the needle.

“Swift has worked with its community over the past few years to significantly raise the bar on the cross-border payments experience,” says Thierry Chilosi, the society’s chief business officer. “And now, together with the industry, we are bringing those same benefits to retail customers around the world.  The new scheme will ensure that consumers and small businesses will experience fast and predictable international payments, whether sending money to family abroad or paying an overseas supplier.”