Associate Product Manager for SwiftRef, Swift

SWIFT's only direct competition in the traditional cross-border payments sector are bodies such as China's CIPS and Russia's SFMS. Yet, lacking the trust and membership of SWIFT these are unlikely to make serious inroads in the international payments sector.

In recent years the competitive landscape for international transfers has been disrupted by the large-scale uptake of cryptocurrency. SWIFT has not been immune, facing competition from high-speed blockchain payment networks such as Ripple. However SWIFT has moved quickly to adapt, introducing SWIFT Global Payments Innovation (gpi) to increase the speed of transactions to nearly that of its competitors but with greatly enhanced visibility. It is also researching blockchain technologies, partnering with companies like Chainlink to trial its own cross-chain protocols that will allow it to continue to thrive in the new financial landscape.