BBVA, together with several other global banks, has completed the first pilot to process instant payments between different currency areas in a real environment.
The pilot was led by Spanish payment service company Iberpay, and Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (Swift), which enables international payments.
It was designed to improve international payments involving currency exchange, with respect to speed, transparency, cost, availability and accessibility.
Along with BBVA, Spanish banks including Santander and CaixaBank have also carried out the first pilot of the international instant payments service in Europe.
The pilot was completed in anticipation of the implementation of the new One-Leg-Out Instant Credit Transfer (OCT) scheme of the European Payment Council (EPC), in November this year.
It aims to improve international payments, consistent with the guidelines of the G7, G20, Financial Stability Board (FSB), Basel Bank for International Settlements (BIS), European Commission, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
The pilot included the integration of Iberpay’s instant real-time transfer platform with Swift’s GPI tracker, to provide end-to-end visibility of payment status, with enhanced transparency.
During the pilot phase, several actual payments originating from banks in other currency areas, sent through the Swift GPI Instant service have been processed, settled, and credited to the beneficiary customer’s account.
The banks in other currency areas include National Australia Bank, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, Itaú Unibanco in Brazil and Lloyds Banking Group in the UK.
The payments were processed within seconds, building on the final payment delivery through Iberpay’s instant transfer service.
BBVA, in its statement, said: “Some of the main advantages of this initiative include the possibility of processing international payments 24/7 within seconds, end-to-end payment traceability.
“All of this allows us to improve the customer’s user experience, offer new use cases and develop innovative services that compete with new players in this payment sector.”
Last month, BBVA selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver advanced analytics and data services in the cloud, as part of its data and AI transformation strategy.
