Bangkok (People's Daily) – The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) transactions platform plans to launch a cross-border electronic instant payment system for Asia-Pacific countries.Several major banks in Australia, China, Singapore and Thailand are expected to join the project.

SWIFT has conducted consultations with banks in Asian countries, including the Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

These banks are all participating in the SWIFT Global Payments Innovation (GPI) project, a big change in cross-border payments which dramatically improves the customer experience in cross-border payments by increasing speed, transparency and end-to-end tracking.

SWIFT is a global member-owned cooperative and the provider of secure financial messaging services, which provide the community with a platform for messaging and standards for communicating.

Eddie Haddad, managing director of Asia-Pacific SWIFT, said, “The SWIFT gpi project will reduce cross-border payment time to minutes or even seconds. The new remittance mechanism will increase the speed and scale of remittances, which will bring a huge change to the regional cross-border remittance market."