BBVA forms part of consortium piloting new SWIFT payment system for corporate clients
The collaboration tailors SWIFT’s global payments innovation for multi-banked corporates, by introducing a common solution delivered in the same way by all gpi banks.

BBVA has made another push into the world of fintech. According to an announcement by the bank published today, it participates in a consortium of corporate businesses and banks that join efforts in a new initiative by SWIFT that seeks to speed up cross border transactions.
The collaboration tailors SWIFT’s global payments innovation (gpi) for multi-banked corporates, by introducing a common solution delivered in the same way by all gpi banks. The new standard is set to enable application providers and banks give corporates enhanced visibility and transparency, improving payments certainty, traceability, exception handling and allowing them to reconcile directly in their treasury operations.
The project will see the deployment of an enhanced multi-bank standard that will improve the experience for corporate customers with multiple overseas businesses. This enhanced standard aims to streamline the process for corporate treasurers by allowing them to initiate and track gpi payments to and from multiple banks in a single format and integrate gpi flows in ERP and Treasury Management Systems.
Pilot participants are poised to commence a test phase before bringing this flow into production in the next few months.
Corporates and banks participating in the pilot alongside BBVA include Airbus, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, Booking.com, Borealis, Citi, Deutsche Bank, General Electric, IATA, Intesa Sanpaolo, JP Morgan, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Microsoft , National Australia Bank, Ping An Group, Roche, RTL Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Société Générale, Standard Chartered Bank y UniCredit.
This marks another step by BBVA into fintech innovation. The bank is also one of the participants in a large-scale blockchain project unveiled in June this year. The project sees the collaboration of the Spanish National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), BME and a number of financial institutions including Banco Santander, BBVA, BNP Paribas, CaixaBank, Commerzbank and Société Générale. The initiative, called Fast Track Listing (FTL), is based on blockchain technology.
The purpose of the joint project is to simplify processes and cut the amount of time needed to register issuances. It has been proven that the use of blockchain technology can improve efficiency in terms of time and resources, as well as increase the security and traceability of processes.