EBA CLEARING, SWIFT and The Clearing House partner to augment cross-border payments

The three private-sector, member-owned companies have completed a proof of concept as part of a new initiative, Immediate Cross-Border Payments (IXB), that demonstrates the ability to synchronise settlement in one instant payment system with settlement in the other and convert real-time messages between both systems. The concept could be expanded to additional currencies and is also replicable for more liquidity-efficient high-value payments.

The IXB initiative has had 11 banks contribute to the design, with seven banks, Bank of America, BBVA Group, Citi, HSBC, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank, J.P. Morgan, and PNC Bank participating in the proof of concept, where the banks successfully exchanged payment and confirmation of receipt messages. The initiative responds to the rising expectations of consumers and businesses who have experienced domestic real-time payments and now have similar expectations for cross-border transactions.

The IXB proof of concept shows that existing regional instant payment systems can be leveraged for cross-border payments and could provide financial institution participants of all sizes with access to a solution for cross-border payments without the need to build and connect to a separate network.