BBVA, SWIFT and Others Integrated SWIFT gpi with UK’s National Instant Payment System FPS

BBVA​, one of the first ten banks worldwide to embrace SWIFT gpi, the service having improved international payments in speed, transparency, tracking, and access to additional information, has participated in SWIFT's latest pilot. The company, the society, and five financial institutions in Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific, have integrated gpi with UK's national instant payment system 'The Faster Payments Scheme' (FPS) to further reduce the transfer time of cross-border payments. 

The pilot was a success and showed the possibility to eliminate time zone restrictions in handling international payments. It also demonstrated that the integration of SWIFT gpi with instant payment systems is globally scalable.

"With the integration of SWIFT with the Faster Payment chamber, we are going to further enhance customer experience, adding real-time processing of payments in British pounds to the benefits gpi already offers, tracking from start to finish and transparent costs," explained Raouf Soussi, the head of Corporate Payment Strategy at BBVA.

In 2019, the Spanish multinational financial services company had engaged in another programme launched by SWIFT to test the viability of transferring money to any country in the world within seconds. The difference between the two years' programme lies in the foreign exchange broker.

In last year's test, payments were liquidated in euros in the European Central Bank's instant payment platform TIPS (TARGET Instant Payment Settlement), which allowed 24×7 real-time payments among registered European banks. However, in the 2020 pilot, payments were liquidated in pounds in the FPS platform.