SWIFT publishes new Pay Later API standard

‘Pay Later’ is an instant online payment facility which offers customers the ability to use traditional bank loan financing to pay for goods purchased online. By selecting Pay Later at the point of purchase, customers are provided with available loans from their banks; they can then select and initiate a loan, knowing that the funds can immediately be credited to the merchants and items dispatched.

By publishing an API standard for ‘Pay Later’, which is formally called the Transactional Finance Application Programming Interface, SWIFT is facilitating the widespread adoption of this new payment model by both merchants and banks around the world. Using this single standard, merchants will be able to implement the Pay Later option ensuring they are able to reach multiple banks around the world and avoid multiple costly implementations.

SWIFT provides a neutral venue for collaboration, standards and payments business expertise – as well as a platform for capturing, publishing and testing specifications that ensures all participants can contribute.

The working group on the Pay Later API standard includes banks, merchants and technology providers. This group will continue to work together to evolve the standard API specifications and rulebook. The aim is to create the conditions for a broad ecosystem of the Pay Later platform to provide optionality to customers, to give merchants a greater ability to sell their goods and to ensure a wide reach for banks. By re-using business definitions from the established ISO 20022 messaging standard that it manages, SWIFT ensures that data specified in APIs is compatible with the messages used to clear and settle instant payments, simplifying data integration for both banks and merchants.

SWIFT welcomes contributions from industry participants to continue evolving the Pay Later standard. With the publication for version one of the specification, multiple participants, including merchants, marketplaces, fintechs and banks will be able to begin working on live pilots.