BNY Mellon partners with SWIFT on automated global payment inquiries
By Lauren Towner · 29 July 2020
BNY Mellon has collaborated with SWIFT to be the first U.S. bank to offer the gpi Case Resolution service to clients, and the fifth globally. This offering marks another milestone in BNY Mellon’s commitment towards client-centric payment services and leading the path for other global payments innovation (gpi) initiatives.
Case Resolution, SWIFT’s cloud-based payment investigation and resolution service, expands its network-wide payments validation toolkit. It allows for dynamic query handling between banks on the SWIFT network and enables banks to create efficiencies by quickly resolving inquiries where operational, regulatory or compliance information is incorrect or missing from payment instructions.
This offering automates the inquiry process, holding other parties in the payment chain accountable for responding within a pre-defined, reasonable timeframe and ultimately reduces friction while speeding resolutions and overall processing significantly. Inquiries take up 2% of BNY Mellon’s cross-border payment volumes, which take a tremendous amount of time, and effort to resolve. Case Resolution saves clients from this extra time and effort, as well as money on investigatory fees, and alleviates the frustration of having to wait for information.
Case Resolution Benefits:
- Reduced time & cost of inquiries
- Faster resolution of inquiries and final payment
- Standardized case handling
- Improved transparency
- Improved Service Levels
- Reduced number of inquiries
BNY Mellon has been a key driver of change within the payments industry. After implementing the SWIFT gpi services in 2017, BNY Mellon has continued to expand its service offerings by adding gpi cover payments in 2018, Payment Tracking and Stop and Recall in 2019, Payment Notifications and Case Resolution in 2020. BNY Mellon is now live with nine BICs in the Case Resolution ecosystem and plans to continue to expand further. This effort has reinforced BNY Mellon’s continued commitment to enhancing the customer experience and its strong leadership position in industry initiatives such as SWIFT gpi.
David Watson, Head of North America at SWIFT, said: “SWIFT’s mission is to make payments as fast, frictionless and secure as possible, so making exceptions and investigations easier to manage is a priority for us. While only a small number of payments are held up by errors and missing information, the time and effort to investigate and resolve them causes frustration for financial institutions. Case Resolution alleviates this frustration by enabling financial institutions to resolve these issues quickly and efficiently. The increasing adoption by banks is testament to the multiple benefits the service offers.”
“BNY Mellon is leading the way in automating payment processes, reducing the costs and time associated with managing payment inquiries,” said Michael Bellacosa, Global Head of Payments and Transaction Services, BNY Mellon. “This solution will vastly improve the time to resolve an inquiry, ensuring invoices are paid on time, reducing fraud, and better meeting client expectations. Ultimately, creating straight-through processing for inquiries has been long overdue and will eventually become the global standard.”