According to the press release, SWIFT, a global provider of secure financial messaging services, has launched the SWIFT Go service to expand into the market of low-value cross-border payments, entering an open competition with Ripple, a crypto decacorn firm.

Seven major global banks are already using the new SWIFT service.

SWIFT launches SWIFT Go

SWIFT has announced the launch of SWIFT Go, a service that will allow small businesses and ordinary people to make low-value payments across borders at cheap transaction fees to any part of the globe directly from their bank accounts.

SWIFT is a member-owned cooperative that enables its members to conduct safe and secure financial transactions. SWIFT operates by providing a unique ID number to each member institution that specifies the bank name and the nation, city, and branch.

According to the announcements, seven leading global banks are already buying the new SWIFT service to manage low-value cross-border payments worth $33 million per year.

Benefits of SWIFT Go

Consumers can wire money to their families and friends in other countries using SWIFT Go. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can send payments to overseas suppliers, and consumers can wire money to their friends and families outside the country using SWIFT Go. The new SWIFT service will utilize data pre-validation and make these transfers’ processing durations and prices clear to the public.

The SWIFT Go is based on the SWIFT gpi protocol, which is used for high-value payments. In more than 200 countries globally, the company’s network comprises over 11,000 financial institutions and 4 billion accounts.

Ripple’s CEO chastises SWIFT’s sluggish and costly payments

Ripple CEO Bradley Garlinghouse stated several times publicly in 2019 that the SWIFT system of money transfer was out of date in his opinion.

According to him, only approximately 6% of SWIFT transactions can be completed without the involvement of human operators.

Furthermore, they are more expensive and take much longer than blockchain-based payments, such as those provided by Ripple.

Garlignhouse stated in the same year that collaboration with SWIFT was still a possibility. The traditional money-transfer business, on the other hand, selected the R3 blockchain technology.