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Mashreq first bank in ME to join Swift gpi

Swift on Sunday announced that Mashreq Bank has signed up for its global payments innovation (gpi) service.
The Dubai-based lender has become the first bank in the Middle East to join this international initiative. The bank will be joining forces with 100 leading banks globally. Swift gpi dramatically improves the customer experience in cross-border payments by increasing the speed, transparency and end-to-end tracking of transactions.
Now live, the first phase of SWIFT gpi focuses on business-to-business payments, helping corporates grow their international business, improve supplier relationships and achieve greater treasury efficiencies.
"We are always keen to be at the forefront of innovation in our industry and strive to offer our customers the best services available," Sandeep Chouhan, group head of operations and technology, Mashreq Bank, said.
Jan-Willem Sudmann, group head international banking, Mashreq Bank, said Mashreq is happy to be part of SWIFT gpi, which is one among the many initiatives undertaken by Swift to facilitate change in the correspondent banking business by bringing in more transparency and speed.
"Mashreq's digitisation roadmap is closely aligned with Swift gpi programme and we look forward to work with Swift to make this a success," he said.
Alain Raes, chief executive of Europe, Middle East & Africa and Asia Pacific, Swift, said, Swift gpi enables member banks to significantly improve the cross-border payment experience for their customers.
"We are delighted that Mashreq Bank has joined the SWIFT gpi service and hope that many more banks across the Middle East will follow its lead."
Meanwhile Swift is already designing a second phase of gpi services, which will see the digital transformation of cross-border payments. These will include a service to immediately stop and recall a payment, a service enabling the transfer of rich payment data, and an international payments assistant service to help corporates initiate error-free cross-border payment instructions.
Finally, SWIFT gpi is exploring distributed ledger technology for real-time nostro account reconciliation. Six leading global transaction banks kicked off a Proof of Concept (PoC) in April 2017 and a further 20 banks are set to join the validation phase at a later stage. The results of the PoC will be presented at Sibos in Toronto in October.
Key features of Swift gpi
. Faster, same day use of funds
. Transparency of fees
. End-to-end payments tracking
. Remittance information transferred unaltered
- business@khgaleejtimes.com