Swift and its global community are developing a cross-border pay by alias capability that would let consumers send money internationally using identifiers such as mobile phone numbers, email addresses and virtual payment addresses rather than recipients’ account details. The initiative seeks to extend the familiar user experience of domestic systems including Spain’s Bizum, Australian Payments Plus’ PayID and Brazil’s Pix to international transactions, with aliases securely matched over Swift. Banks, payment service providers, technology companies and domestic payment systems from four continents are participating. The work is the next stage of Swift’s consumer payments framework, which launched in June and now involves more than 100 banks, combining the new front-end capability with full-value transfers, greater predictability and faster settlement. Swift reported that 75% of payments over its network currently reach the receiving bank within 10 minutes and often within seconds.
2026-09-28SWIFT
Swift advances cross-border pay by alias initiative linking domestic payment systems
Swift is developing a cross-border pay by alias capability that would allow consumers to send money internationally using mobile numbers, email addresses and other familiar identifiers. The initiative connects participants from domestic systems such as Bizum, PayID and Pix and builds on Swift’s consumer payments framework, which now involves more than 100 banks.