Swift Announces Partnership With Blockchain Software Firm R3

The major financial messaging service for the some of the biggest banks in the world announced its partnership with the blockchain software startup R3 in order to integrate the platform of R3 with the new payment standards GPI framework of which we find out more in our blockchain news below.

Swift’s CEO Leibbrandt said at a CNBC panel:

“We are announcing later today a proof-of-concept with the R3 blockchain on trade where you can initiate a payment on the trade platform and then it goes into GPI.’’

R3 was founded back in 2014 and leads a consortium of the world’s biggest financial institutions hoping to close the gap between the banking industry and the blockchain technology.

Swift will hook its GPI technology to a blockchain platform named Corda created by the R3 startup. The firms that are already using the Corda network of R3 will also be able to authorize payments with the help of the GPI link. Swift believes that the GPI is a technology that is able to increase the speed of the cross-border payments between banks.

Leibbdrandt was speaking at the panel where Brad Garlinghouse took participation who is a strong competitor of R3 since Ripple hopes to become the most used crypto asset for banks around the world. Garlinghouse pointed out that Ripple is open to ‘’work with Swift.’’

Swift is still the leader in cross-border payments since more than 10,000 institutions are using the network. Each day more than $200 billion are moved via Swift.

Despite being hesitant to embrace blockchain due to its volatile swings, Leibbrandt said:

“I think that the big part of Ripple’s value proposition is the cryptocurrency XRP. There we do find the banks are hesitant to convert things into a cryptocurrency right now because of the volatility in the currencies.”