SWIFT rolls out pre-payment prediction service for cross-border payments

It identifies possible problems in the future payment based on previous data from 9 billion transactions.

SWIFT has rolled out a new service for cross-border transactions that makes use of past data to predict possible problems.

The new service centralizes and analyzes previous similar transactions on the SWIFT network to detect potential errors in payee information, which SWIFT said is the most common cause of cross-border delays.

This centralised verification is reportedly based on aggregated and anonymised data from nine billion transaction messages between four billion accounts each year, SWIFT added.

“Think of it as the ultimate payment pre-check” said Thomas Zschach, chief innovation officer, SWIFT. “When someone wants to make an international payment, we can instantly predict the likelihood of success based on whether the account has been credited successfully in the past, and then present this information directly to the customer so that they can fix any errors or typos before the payment even starts its processing.”

The new capability is an expanded feature of SWIFT’s Payment Pre-validation service and is available to banks via an API, meaning their customers can immediately benefit to send and receive international payments around the world even faster.