Consumers and small businesses receiving payments in a range of countries, including five of the world’s largest remittance markets, will be among the first to benefit as Swift and banks globally roll out a new framework for cross-border retail payments.
Payments sent across popular corridors to Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Germany, India, Pakistan, Spain, Thailand, the UK and the US will come with certainty of cost, full-value delivery, end-to-end traceability, and faster speeds, including instant settlement where possible, as an initial group of more than 25 banks go live by the end of June. More payment routes are expected to be active by the end of the year.
Of the initial launch markets, Bangladesh, China, Germany, Pakistan and India are all in the top 10 countries for remittances received.
Swift announced in September 2025 that it would develop the new network rules with a voluntary coalition of earlier adopter banks to further elevate the cross-border payments experience towards the G20’s goals for consumer payments. While 75% of payments over Swift reach destination banks within 10 minutes or less – ahead of the G20 target – more needs to be done in the front-end and final domestic leg to improve the end-to-end experience. Swift’s framework addresses those areas, providing retail customers with the ease, peace of mind and predictability they expect when sending money internationally.
Nasir Ahmed, head of payments scheme at Swift, said,
“The financial community has made strong collective progress to improve the speed and transparency of cross-border payments, but there is room to go further. Everyone should be able to transact internationally at pace, safe in the knowledge that the full value will arrive with the recipient and that the fees will be affordable and fixed from the start.
“That is what our community is enabling with this initiative. We’re committed to giving everyone the same first-class cross-border payments experience across all markets and all regulated forms of value – whenever, wherever and with full transparency – and we’re pleased to see the global banking community making this possible for their end customers.”
The payments scheme is one half of Swift’s parallel track innovation strategy to enable fast and frictionless cross-border transactions, regardless of the type of value being exchanged. Swift is also adding a blockchain-based shared ledger to its infrastructure stack, with an initial focus of enabling 24/7 real time cross-border payments. This will facilitate the trusted and scalable on-chain movement of regulated tokenized value across Swift’s secure, resilient network of 11,500 banks and financial institutions that spans more than 200 countries and territories.
More than 50 banks from around the world are supporting the framework, including:
- Absa
- CaixaBank
- KEB Hana Bank
- Akbank
- Citi
- Lloyds Bank
- ANZ
- City Bank
- Mizuho
- Axis Bank
- Commonwealth Bank of Australia
- National Australia Bank
- Banco Bradesco
- Crédit Agricole
- NatWest
- Banco Santander
- Denizbank
- Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)
- Banco XP
- Deutsche Bank
- Saudi Awwal Bank (SAB)
- Bank Alfalah
- Emirates NBD
- Societe Generale
- Bank Negara Indonesia
- Garanti BBVA
- Standard Chartered
- Bank of America
- HDFC Bank
- State Bank of India
- Bank of China
- ICICI
- TD Bank Group
- Bank of the Philippine Islands
- Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)
- UBS
- Banorte
- Itaú Unibanco
- Westpac
- BBVA
- JP Morgan Chase
- YapiKredi
- BNP Paribas
- KASIKORNBANK PCL