Swift aims to make international money transfers as simple as domestic payments

Swift revealed a new initiative to extend the convenience of domestic consumer payment systems to cross-border transactions. By linking services such as Spain’s Bizum, Australia’s PayID and Brazil’s Pix with its global messaging network, the company aims to let senders use familiar identifiers—mobile numbers, email addresses or virtual payment addresses—for international transfers. The effort gathers banks, payment service providers and technology firms from four continents and follows a consumer-payments framework introduced in June that already involves more than 100 banks.

Swift notes that 75% of its payments now arrive at the receiving bank within ten minutes, often in seconds. Among the participants are institutions like Banco de Crédito del Perú, Banorte, BBVA, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, DBS and TerraPay. Juan Martinez, Swift’s Payments Platform Managing Director, said the move will reduce complexity at the first click, while AP+ CEO Lynn Kraus called it a step toward making international payments feel like domestic ones.