StanChart Launches Public Real-Time Tracking of Cross-Border Payments

Standard Chartered ups the transparency of global payments with the introduction of a public portal for real-time tracking.

The new portal, SC GPI Track will trace cross-border payments processed through the bank’s major clearing centers to their clients and from them to their corporate and retail clients. According to Standard Chartered, the launch makes it the first the bank to introduce such a payment tracking platform well ahead of the SWIFT November 2020 payments confirmation mandate – an initiative aimed to make it mandatory for all financial institutions to confirm to beneficiaries when a cross-border has been credited to their account.

By entering SWIFT unique end-to-end transaction reference (UETR) linked with the cross-border payment, Standard Chartered clients and their counterparties will be able to obtain the real-time status of payments.

SWIFT’s chief business development officer, Alain Raes, underlined that the sector has long wrongly believed that technology was the hindrance to enhanced cross-border payment capabilities when it has instead been a case of lacking progressive thinking at financial institutions. Recorded data is major evidence against believers of tech headwinds in payment speed – 50 percent of gpi payments are credited to end beneficiaries within five minutes, on average, and 50 percent are credited within 30 minutes.