Real-time tracking has opened up a new world of convenience in our day-to-day lives, and it's now expanded into cross-border payments. How can banks benefit?
The benefits of being able to track things are well entrenched in our daily routines. We can conveniently track a car ride from the moment we request it, right up to its arrival at the pick-up point.
And we can track a parcel at any point in its journey, from a supplier half way around the world, with a simple tracking ID and a few taps of a screen.
Customers today expect the same speed, transparency and certainty in their business interactions, especially when they involve moving large amounts of money.
They want to track all their payments from end-to-end, and know with certainty when the funds have reached the end recipient’s account.
Being able to track, and receive final confirmation, on all cross-border payments unlocks tremendous opportunities for all. Here are four key benefits:
1. Improves your customers’ experience
Tracking and confirmation introduce a new level of transparency and certainty in cross-border payments.
End-to-end tracking unlocks full visibility across the correspondent network. This means you can help your customers identify delayed payments within minutes and, crucially, help them understand why they may have been held up.
To ease the process, banks can also provide self-service access to this data directly to their customers and allow them to track their payments with the click of a button through online banking interfaces.
2. Boost your operational efficiency
With real-time tracking, you can easily identify where a payment is in the chain, and pinpoint any potential hold ups. This greatly reduces the time required to investigate and respond to enquiries from your customers or other banks in the payments chain. With less time spent on investigations, you can focus on delivering value-added services to your customers, reduce operational costs and improve efficiency.
The instant availability of payment information also enables you to help your corporate customers improve their own operational efficiency. That’s because real-time access to payment data allows improved cash-flow forecasting and frees up capacity to focus on value-add activities.
3. Allows you to offer new services
Central to payment tracking and confirmation is the availability of real-time payment data. Leveraging this data enables banks to innovate in new ways, either by serving new products to customers through existing online banking portals, or by leveraging the use of technologies such as APIs to develop new business models and use cases.
4. Foster a more secure and trusted ecosystem
The ongoing expansion of ecommerce platforms and continuous growth of international trade are contributing to the rising demand for speed, transparency and certainty in cross-border payments.
Take the following example: A corporate orders goods from a supplier and awaits a dispatch confirmation. On their end, the supplier hasn’t received a payment and therefore has not released the goods. Previously, the corporate initiating the payment would have had to initiate a claim to their banks who in turn would start an investigation.
Now, with transparent payment information, the corporate initiating the payment can be certain and prove that the payment has arrived, and the supplier can release the goods faster.
Unlocking payment tracking and confirmations from any account to any account around the globe will benefit you, and the whole community, creating a more trusted ecosystem for all.
Start tracking your payments today
Learn more about how you can start tracking and confirming your payments today using our free-of-charge Basic Tracker or become a Swift GPI member.
