SWIFT: Global banks to roll out new norms to speed up cross-border payments

SBI, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and Axis Bank are the Indian banks who have supported the new framework

SWIFT, a global messaging network facilitating cross-border payments, on Thursday said banks across the world, including major Indian banks like State Bank of India (SBI), HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank, will begin rolling out a new framework aimed at making cross-border retail payments faster, more predictable and cheaper for consumers and small businesses.

  India will be amongst the first countries to benefit, as one of the top remittance-receiving nations globally.

 

“Consumers and small businesses receiving payments in a range of countries, including five of the world’s largest remittance markets, will be among the first to benefit as Swift and banks globally roll out a pioneering new framework to bring next-generation speed and new levels of affordability and predictability to cross-border retail payments,” Swift said in a statement.

 

According to the Belgium-based entity, whose messaging platform connects more than 11,500 banking and securities organisations, market infrastructures and corporate customers in more than 200 countries and territories, payments sent across popular corridors to Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Germany, India, Pakistan, Spain, Thailand, the UK and the US will come with certainty of cost, full-value delivery, end-to-end traceability and the fastest speeds, including instant settlement where possible, as an initial group of more than 25 banks goes live by the end of June.

 

“More payment routes are expected to be active by the end of the year, scaling the benefits of fast, transparent account-to-account cross-border transactions to markets globally,” it said.

 

In September 2025, Swift had announced that it would develop the new network rules with a voluntary coalition of early-adopter banks to further elevate the cross-border payments experience towards the G20’s goals for consumer payments.

 

About 75 per cent of payments routed through the Swift network currently reach the destination bank within 10 minutes or less, exceeding the G20’s speed targets. However, delays often occur in the front-end processing and final domestic settlement leg, areas the new framework seeks to address.

 

Nasir Ahmed, head of payments scheme at Swift, said, “The financial community has made strong collective progress to improve the speed and transparency of cross-border payments, but there is room to go further. Everyone should be able to transact internationally at pace, safe in the knowledge that the full value will arrive with the recipient and that the fees will be affordable and fixed from the start.”

 

The payments scheme forms part of Swift’s broader innovation strategy to enable faster and more seamless cross-border transactions. The organisation is also developing a blockchain-based shared ledger designed to facilitate 24/7 real-time cross-border payments and enable the movement of tokenised value across its network.

 

Neeraj Gambhir, executive director at Axis Bank, said the initiative would help improve the digital remittance experience for customers.

 

“We aim to give our customers a seamless remittance experience for their retail cross-border payments which is completely digital, faster, predictable and convenient to use with transparency on charges,” Gambhir said.