Swift has launched a new service based on its global payments innovation (gpi) service, which brings its payments tracker solution to low-value payments made by consumers and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Swift Go, which is now live, enables financial institutions to offer what Swift calls “a seamless payments experience” for small transactions often initiated by SMEs to suppliers overseas and by individuals sending remittances to friends and family internationally. Using tighter service level agreements between institutions and pre-validation of data, the solution includes a single payment format to enable straight-through processing, while the amount, time, fees and exchange rate of a payment are known in advance. The sender and receiver of a payment can then track the status in real time.

“Swift Go is a further step towards achieving our vision of enabling anybody, anywhere, to send money instantly and securely around the world,” says Stephen Gilderdale, chief product officer at Swift. “The new service is a direct response to the needs of small businesses and consumers for fast, easy, predictable, secure and competitively priced cross-border payments. Our new service will allow banks to compete effectively in one of the fastest growing segments of the payments market, delivering a seamless experience for their customers.”

The new service is part of Swift’s wider strategy to expand its focus beyond financial messaging into end-to-end transaction management services, and has been launched following a successful pilot held last year, in which 20 banks tested out its functionality.

The first trial payments were exchanged at the end of September by Bank of China, Barclays, BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank, KEB Hana Bank, MyBank, National Australia Bank, SMBC, Standard Bank, StoneX, UniCredit and Wells Fargo. An additional seven banks – Banca Intesa, BBVA, DNB, HSBC, Sberbank, Société Générale and Standard Chartered – subsequently participated in a pilot phase in October.