Workers’ Remittances

Fast, efficient, and cost-effective clearing and settlement of person-to-person payments

SWIFT’s solution for Workers’ Remittances is designed to support banks’ needs for bilateral clearing and settlement of cross-border, person-to-person payments.

The solution uses a common market practice rulebook, messaging standards and services, and a specific reference data directory. Together, these components provide an efficient platform for exchanging person-to-person payments.

Workers’ remittances are generally defined as “cross-border, person-to-person payments of relatively low-value.” In total, over 200 million migrants initiate 1 to 1.5 billion cross-border payments per year. Industry revenue exceeds USD 15 billion per year.

Banks active in the market generally develop specific proprietary or bilateral services. While these are effective, they lack scalability.

Where open correspondent banking arrangements are used, these payments are undifferentiated from other cross-border services. In these cases customer service and processing efficiency are sub-optimal due to a lack of clear market practices and standards.