SWIFT brings global FinTech companies to LATTICE80 in September for community innovation on top of gpi platform

Singapore, 6
September 2017 – SWIFT will be hosting a global FinTech challenge
at LATTICE80 on 13 and 14 September
2017. SWIFT gpi Industry Challenge is a 2 day
workshop with 5 start-ups, 30 banks, and a chance to compete proof-of-concepts
for 200,000 EUR. During the span of the workshop, the banks will work with
FinTechs to develop new services for SWIFT’s 11,000+ members, leveraging its
SWIFT gpi service. The 5 selected start-ups are AccessPay, Assembly Payments, Backrail, Biotos and CurrencyVue. Two winners will
emerge and will be featured at Sibos – SWIFT’s global flagship event – at
Toronto in October this year.

SWIFT gpi has prompted the
largest change in cross-border payments over the last 30 years. SWIFT gpi is
providing an effective solution to the inherent process challenges in
correspondent banking today resulting in slow payments, lack of transparency on
fees, exchange rates or timing of final credit to beneficiary. Today, gpi banks
can offer their customers same day credit to end beneficiaries, end to end
real-time status tracking, transparency on fees & exchange rates, and
confirmations of credit to the end beneficiary. This is being achieved in
various forms, including by tagging each payment with a Unique End to end
Tracking Reference (UETR) number and opening APIs to access the generated
real-time tracking data in the cloud. SWIFT gpi is also testing new
technologies, such as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) for real time
reconciliations between a bank’s Nostro accounts.

Eddie Haddad, Managing
Director of SWIFT Asia Pacific said, “SWIFT gpi has been met with so much early
success and promise, the banks now see the initiative as a primary platform to
innovate on. Consequently, SWIFT is organising this global industry challenge to
showcase cutting-edge FinTechs working with the world’s most progressive banks
to develop new services. I expect the Challenge will help solve real world
problems because SWIFT gpi banks and FinTechs will be co-creating overlay
services over the gpi rails by using its unique features to enable different
use cases in cross-border payments.”

Joe Seunghyun Cho, Founding
CEO of LATTICE80 said, “As a not-for-profit FinTech hub, it is our passion to
build a FinTech ecosystem in Singapore with the rest of the world. The SWIFT
gpi Industry Challenge is the first of its kind in the cross-border payments
space, and I am looking forward to seeing use cases in the areas of invoice
presentment and reconciliation, exchange of supply chain documentation,
exchange and interactive enquiry of account and processing conditions to
improve straight through processing, digitisation and corporate process
optimisation, transaction information to support compliance and sanctions
screening and building customer experience journeys for corporates, etc.”

Atul Bhuchar, Group Payments
Product Head, Global Transaction Services, DBS Bank said: “Innovation is deeply
embedded in our DNA, and we want to continue to create simple, digital,
frictionless payments solutions and transaction banking services for our
customers. As one of the first few banks globally to adopt SWIFT gpi for
corporate cross-border payments, we are very pleased to be a part of SWIFT’s
Industry Challenge and to be working with emerging FinTechs as we continue on
our journey to shape the future of banking.”

Pranav Seth, Head of
E-Business, Business Transformation and Fintech and Innovation Group, OCBC Bank
said: “OCBC has successfully driven innovations and collaborations with
FinTechs, and we are excited to work with SWIFT on this innovation challenge.
OCBC has also led many innovations in the payments space – we led DLT-based
domestic and international payments in South East Asia, and are a key
contributor to the Singapore coin initiative. We have multiple experiments
running on optimising letters of credit, as well as creating superior
industry-wide KYC solutions. We hope this challenge will help us create
industry solutions and solve many more related international payments
issues.”

Shirish Wadivkar, Managing
Director & Global Head – Correspondent Banking Products, Standard Chartered
Bank said: “Collaborative innovation in the banking community fuels the success
of SWIFT gpi and its wide adoption as a norm for payments across the world. We
are very excited to participate in the SWIFT gpi Industry Challenge to further
the spirit of collaboration with the FinTech community. Looking forward to
co-create innovative solutions to today’s real issues and hence drive the next
phase of SWIFT gpi and payments transformation.”

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Formed in
2016, the Industry Challenge programme was developed by Innotribe to bring
together SWIFT Member Institutions, FinTech companies and SWIFT internal teams
to address the obstacles and opportunities facing the industry. The idea behind
the programme is to identify and validate emerging, utility-based solutions to
problems faced by SWIFT’s member organisations. The programme then brings
together an integral mix of experts, stakeholders and innovators to explore new
solutions and develop proof of concepts together. Innotribe’s objective is for
this highly collaborative process to reveal solutions that are original,
scalable and ready for immediate piloting.

LATTICE80 is
the world’s largest Fintech Hub, located in Singapore. LATTICE80 prides itself
on creating an ecosystem for fintech startups to collaborate, connect and
co-create. The mission of the independent not for profit hub is to offer
Fintech companies the opportunity to tap on the rich network and resources to
develop smart technologies and springboard to international success. It boasts
an impressive technological infrastructure that corporate members can leverage
& lay a foundation to create a truly unique world-class community.

SWIFT is a
global member owned cooperative and the world’s leading provider of secure
financial messaging services. We provide our community with a platform for
messaging and standards for communicating, and we offer products and services
to facilitate access and integration, identification, analysis and regulatory
compliance. Our messaging platform, products and services connect more than
11,000 banking and securities organisations, market infrastructures and
corporate customers in more than 200 countries and territories. While SWIFT does
not hold funds or manage accounts on behalf of customers, we enable our global
community of users to communicate securely, exchanging standardised financial
messages in a reliable way, thereby supporting global and local financial
flows, as well as trade and commerce all around the world. As their trusted
provider, we relentlessly pursue operational excellence; we support our
community in addressing cyber threats; and we continually seek ways to lower
costs, reduce risks and eliminate operational inefficiencies. Our products and
services support our community’s access and integration, business intelligence,
reference data and financial crime compliance needs. SWIFT also brings the
financial community together – at global, regional and local levels – to shape
market practice, define standards and debate issues of mutual interest or
concern. Headquartered in Belgium, SWIFT’s international governance and
oversight reinforces the neutral, global character of its cooperative
structure. SWIFT’s global office network ensures an active presence in all the
major financial centres.