Mr. Silawat Santivisit, Executive Vice President of KASIKORNBANK, said that the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication or SWIFT, in collaboration with 21 banks, has piloted cross-border payment innovation initiative aimed at improving payment experience for customers transacting via correspondent banking by increasing the speed, transparency and predictability of the service.
The pilot project is planned to run through to December, the first results of which will be shared at Sibos 2016 Geneva this September. The participating banks include: ANZ, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Bank of China, Bank of New York Mellon, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Danske Bank, DBS, ICBC, ING Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, JPMorgan Chase, Mizuho, Nordea, Royal Bank of Canada, SMBC, Standard Chartered, UniCredit, and Wells Fargo.
Through this program and others to come, the partnered group of leading banks will test the innovation, with a joint ambition to significantly improve the cross-border payment experience for corporate customers. It aims to incorporate additional innovations and deploy new technologies to this payment solution, and define additional service level agreements that will cater for other client groups, further reducing the costs and frictions arising from compliance and liquidity.
Following the announcement of the program in January 2016, 51 banks have now agreed to participate in the establishment of a new service level agreement (SLA) for cross-border payment. Among the latest to join include KASIKORNBANK, Standard Bank, Investec, Resona Bank, Tadhamon International Islamic Bank, and Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI).
Mr. Silawat said finally that KBank is the only Thai bank chosen by SWIFT, a world-renowned institution, to spearhead this payment innovation initiative, which comes at the height of trade development in this digital age. The first phase of the service will focus on business-to-business (B2B) payments with a solution designed to fuel international business expansion, improve supplier relationships and initiate greater efficiency in financial management among companies. Moreover, the new system will allow same day use of funds, proper and predictable fees, end-to-end payments tracking and rich payment information transfer.
With the availability of this payment innovation, KBank will be able to use existing technologies to enhance B2B payments in no time, spurring visible improvements for its corporate customers. The Bank expects to boost its total cross-border transactions from the current number at 500,000 per annum, thanks to such a unique kind of development whereby no significant changes to internal systems are needed to reap the benefits of the program.