TORONTO-- September 20, 2023 -- Visa and Swift today announced a collaboration to streamline international business-to-business (B2B) payments by strengthening connectivity between their networks that move trillions in value globally. Working together, the organizations aim to provide financial institutions and their customers with more choice when sending money across borders, while improving the end-to-end speed and transparency of their transactions.

As part of the joint effort, announced in Toronto at the annual Sibos conference, Visa will deploy capabilities developed by Swift that can help increase the speed and certainty of cross-border money movement. This includes Swift Payment Pre-validation to enable upfront checks of Visa B2B Connect payments, reducing unnecessary delays by catching potential errors before the payment is initiated. Additionally, the networks plan to work together to increase end-to-end transaction visibility by using high-speed Swift GPI capabilities and tracking data. Visa will migrate its connection to Swift through Alliance Cloud, a scalable, secure cloud-based channel for connecting to Swift’s network, as well as messaging services, standards and solutions.

Through this collaboration, financial institutions on both networks will have more routing options for their business customers, with real-time status and updates. In a world facing increased fragmentation, these efforts advance the goals of both organizations to keep the world’s financial infrastructure connected with the right levels of security, resiliency, reliability and compliance.

Chris Newkirk, Global Head of Commercial & Money Movement Solutions at Visa said: “Many businesses continue to face complexities while making cross-border payments that hurt their bottom lines. By working with Swift, Visa will help enhance our financial institution clients’ offerings to their corporate customers. The collaboration will help provide clarity and enhanced data, while removing errors before, during and after the payment.”

Thierry Chilosi, Chief Strategy Officer at Swift commented: “Expectations for international payments are rising as the complexity of moving money across borders is intensifying. Our work with Visa helps address both challenges, providing new connectivity and capabilities in the backend to drive exciting innovation in front-end customer channels. It’s part of our strategic focus on payment optionality, enabling value in all forms to move seamlessly around the world with strong peace of mind on security and trust and, through collaborations like this, consistently elevating the customer experience.”

Swift provides best-in-class infrastructure with unrivalled reach, transparency, security, and trust — infrastructure that interoperates seamlessly across geographies, networks and technologies while neutrally supporting fiat or digital currencies. It supports an inclusive and sustainable global finance system, securely interconnecting more than 11,500 institutions across more than 200 countries and territories to move the equivalent of world GDP roughly every three days. Through strong focus on innovation, and aligned with G20 goals, it is consistently raising the bar on the cross-border experience with advanced capabilities that remove friction, accelerate speed and increase security and transparency.

Visa B2B Connect is an innovative cross-border B2B payments solution for businesses worldwide. Built upon Visa’s extensive global network and fortified by advanced security technology, Visa B2B Connect empowers businesses to seamlessly authenticate and manage cross-border B2B payments. By offering real-time visibility, expedited payment processing, and robust monitoring capabilities, the platform sets new standards for efficiency, transparency and security. Since October 2022, Visa B2B Connect has welcomed over 30 bank clients in more than 20 countries, and payments have been routed to 90 countries globally.