SABB the first bank in the Middle East, North Africa & Turkey to go live with SWIFT gpi for corporates

Riyadh: The Saudi British Bank (SABB), one of Saudi Arabia’s leading financial institutions, and SWIFT, global member owned cooperative and the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services announce today that SABB is the first bank in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey (MENAT) region to go live with SWIFT gpi for Corporates service (g4c). As part of the early adopters for g4c program, SABB and one of the leading global corporates are now the first in the region to go live on the service.

The news comes on the heels of the official launch of SWIFT gpi for Corporates on 19 July. The service enables multi-banked corporates to initiate and track payments across banks directly from their treasury/payment systems. In developing SWIFT gpi for Corporates, SWIFT worked with leading banks, corporates and treasury software providers. SABB joins the elite group of more than 50 global institutions on this service.

The first-of-its kind, this cross-industry collaboration builds on SWIFT’s global payments innovation (gpi) service to further enhance the cross-border payments experience. This new standard enables application providers and banks to offer corporates better visibility and transparency, improving certainty of payments, traceability, exception handling and reconciliation directly in their treasury operations.

Onur Ozan, Head of the Middle East, Turkey & North Africa, SWIFT, says: “Banks around the world have embraced SWIFT gpi as the new standard for cross-border payments and are already delivering faster, more transparent and traceable payments to their customers. SWIFT gpi for Corporates takes this a step further, allowing corporates to track payments in real time and receive confirmation of credit in a consistent fashion, across multiple banks within their corporate treasury systems. This is exactly what corporates have had as a key ask from banks”

Majed Najm, Deputy Managing Director, Corporate and Institutional Banking, The Saudi British Bank, says: “We are excited to be the first bank in the MENAT region offering SWIFT gpi for Corporates and joining the team of more than 50 elite global institutions that offer SWIFT gpi for Corporates. Our corporate customers will now be able to rely on fast, efficient and transparent cross-border payments through a standardised gpi experience, enabling payment tracking and transparency directly into their ERP’s and Treasury Management Systems. An increasing number of banks are offering SWIFT gpi tracking through their individual portals, which benefits companies track via bank specific platforms. However, for multi-national institutions, that have multiple local and international banking relationships, SWIFT gpi for Corporates provides a centralized view of multi-banking information enabling to track their payments in one place.”

Launched in early 2017, SWIFT gpi already has almost 500 banking groups signed on to the service, and accounts for 55% of SWIFT cross-border payment traffic. More than 300 billion USD in SWIFT gpi messages are sent every day, enabling payments to be credited to end beneficiaries within minutes – if not within seconds.

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Press Contacts:
Borouj Consulting
Randa Mazzawi or Nicola Ellegaard
+971 4 3403005
SWIFT@boroujconsulting.com  

 About SABB

The Saudi British Bank (SABB), a Saudi Joint Stock Company, was established in 21 January 1978 and is an associate of the HSBC Group. SABB is a leading corporate and institutional international bank in the Kingdom, with a leading retail banking and wealth management proposition. SABB is also a leading player in trade finance, foreign exchange, equity and debt wholesale banking and advisory.

Also, the Bank provides other banking products and services which include current accounts, savings, time deposits, corporate credit facilities, consumer and mortgage loans, trade finance, cash and payments management, treasury and credit cards.

For more information please visit: https://www.sabb.com/en/ 

About gpi

The SWIFT global payments innovation (SWIFT gpi) is the largest change in cross-border payments over the last 30 years and is the new standard. SWIFT gpi dramatically improves the customer experience in cross-border payments by increasing their speed, transparency and end-to-end tracking. Hundreds of thousands of cross-border payments are today being sent using the new gpi standard, and payments are made quickly, typically within minutes, even seconds.

SWIFT gpi allows corporates to receive an enhanced payments service, with the following key features:

• Faster, same day use of funds within the time zone of the receiving gpi member
• Transparency of fees
• End-to-end payments tracking
• Remittance information transferred unaltered

As an initiative, SWIFT gpi engages the global banking industry and fintech communities to innovate in the area of cross-border payments while reducing their back-office costs. Since its launch in January 2017, gpi has dramatically improved the cross-border payments experience for corporates in over 450 country corridors. Key features of the gpi service include enhanced business rules and a secure tracking database in the cloud accessible via APIs. Thanks to SWIFT gpi, corporates can grow their international business, improve supplier relationships, and achieve greater treasury efficiencies. Overall, nearly 50% of SWIFT gpi payments are credited to end beneficiaries within 30 minutes, and almost 100% of payments within 24 hours. Those that take longer typically involve more complex foreign exchange conversions, compliance checks or regulatory authorisations.

In addition to the more than 180 financial institutions that have adopted gpi, more than 55 payment market infrastructures are already exchanging gpi payments, enabling domestic exchange and tracking. Payment market infrastructures have a critical role to play in facilitating the end-to-end tracking of cross-border payments because as soon as international payments hit the destination country, they are typically cleared through local payment infrastructures.

About SWIFT

SWIFT is a global member owned cooperative and the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services. We provide our community with a platform for messaging and standards for communicating, and we offer products and services to facilitate access and integration, identification, analysis and regulatory compliance.

Our messaging platform, products and services connect more than 11,000 banking and securities organisations, market infrastructures and corporate customers in more than 200 countries and territories. While SWIFT does not hold funds or manage accounts on behalf of customers, we enable our global community of users to communicate securely, exchanging standardised financial messages in a reliable way, thereby supporting global and local financial flows, as well as trade and commerce all around the world.

As their trusted provider, we relentlessly pursue operational excellence; we support our community in addressing cyber threats; and we continually seek ways to lower costs, reduce risks and eliminate operational inefficiencies. Our products and services support our community’s access and integration, business intelligence, reference data and financial crime compliance needs. SWIFT also brings the financial community together – at global, regional and local levels – to shape market practice, define standards and debate issues of mutual interest or concern. SWIFT’s strategic five year plan, SWIFT2020, challenges SWIFT to continue investing in the security, reliability and growth of its core messaging platform, while making additional investments in existing services and delivering new and innovative solutions.

Headquartered in Belgium, SWIFT’s international governance and oversight reinforces the neutral, global character of its cooperative structure. SWIFT’s global office network ensures an active presence in all the major financial centres.

For more information, visit www.swift.com  or follow us on Twitter: @swiftcommunity and LinkedIn: SWIFT.

© Press Release 2019