India-based banking group ICICI Bank announced on Wednesday it has teamed up with SWIFT to offer a facility that helps overseas partner banks to send instant remittances on behalf of their customers to the beneficiary in India. ICICI Bank claims this makes it the first bank in Asia-Pacific and second globally to offer the facility, called SWIFT gpi Instant, for cross-border inward payments.
ICICI Bank reported the service will offer instant credit works by connecting SWIFT gpi with a real-time domestic payments infrastructure.
“ICICI Bank has enabled its systems to process the payments message coming via ‘SWIFT gpi Instant’ and further remit it instantly to any bank* account in India using the IMPS (Immediate Payment Solution) platform. (*bank enabled to receive foreign remittance through IMPS). The solution makes the cross-border personal remittances upto ₹2 lakh coming into India, transparent, reliable and instant and thereby reducing the turnaround time significantly from the industry practice of at least few hours.”
Sriram H. Iyer, Head of International Banking Group, ICICI Bank, shared more details about the collaboration by stat:
“India is the largest recipient of cross-border remittances, according to the World Bank data, and ICICI Bank has been a dominant player in inward remittances to India. We are delighted to be the first bank in Asia-Pacific to go live with the ‘SWIFT gpi Instant’ solution.This integration with the SWIFT platform brings in the convenience of the path-breaking paradigm of almost instant and seamless cross-border remittances.”
Kiran Shetty, CEO and Regional Head for India and South Asia at SWIFT, further commented:
“As the world is increasingly becoming real-time, ‘SWIFT gpi Instant’ is an important milestone for our strategic ambition to help banks and their clients meet the growing global demand for instant and frictionless cross-border transfers. We look forward to continuing our work with market infrastructures and leading financial institutions like ICICI Bank to bring benefits of seamless cross-border payments to customers, driving financial inclusion in this part of the world.”