SWIFT has announced the rollout of a new payments framework for cross-border retail transactions, with more than 25 banks committing to process payments under the framework by the end of June. The initiative is designed to give consumers and small businesses greater certainty on speed, upfront and fixed fees, full-value delivery and end-to-end traceability for international account-to-account payments, including instant settlement where possible. Initial corridors include payments to Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Germany, India, Pakistan, Spain, Thailand, the UK and the US, with Bangladesh, China, Germany, Pakistan and India highlighted among the top 10 remittance recipient countries. The framework follows SWIFT’s September 2025 announcement that it would develop new network rules with a voluntary coalition of early adopter banks to move retail cross-border payments closer to G20 targets, focusing on improvements in the front-end and final domestic leg even as 75% of SWIFT payments already reach destination banks within 10 minutes or less. SWIFT also reiterated its parallel work to add a blockchain-based shared ledger to its infrastructure, initially aimed at enabling 24/7 real-time cross-border payments and the on-chain movement of regulated tokenised value across its network. More payment routes are expected to be activated by the end of the year as adoption expands.

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