SWIFT launches India operations

SWIFT is Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication

SWIFT India Domestic Services (SWIFT India) today marked its official launch in India. SWIFT India is a partnership between SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), the global banking cooperative, and public and private sector banks in India.

SWIFT India is planning to set a solid foundation for India's economic growth and technological innovation by providing reliable, secure and reusable domestic messaging platform. This would help in efficient and harmonised exchange of financial information between banks, corporates and market infrastructures.

It is expected to deploy domestic messaging services by the end of this calendar year. The services will include domestic payments settlement system such as Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS), National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT), Electronic Clearing Service (ECS)/ National Electronic Clearing Service (NECS), and the future National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI ) Automated Clearing House (ACH), trade finance, treasury, securities and corporate-to-bank exchange.

SWIFT India also provides different types of messaging to support all associated business flows like store-and-forward, real time, file-transfer and secure browsing.

"We will be complimenting other platforms as a delivery channel," said Saqib Sheikh, CEO, SWIFT India. SWIFT India has nine partner banks currently which include names like Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and State Bank of India. These banks hold 45% equity stake of SWIFT India equally. The remaining 55% equity stake is held by SWIFT.

SWIFT is a member-owned cooperative that provides the communications platform, products and services to connect more than 10,000 financial institutions and corporations in 212 countries. The daily average messages processed by SWIFT globally is 20 million while it rises to 22 million on peak days.