CHIPS (Clearing House Interbank Payment System) has announced that it will begin to accept large value payment transactions via SWIFTNet in addition to accepting them over its private TCP/IP Network. CHIPS customers will benefit from communications flexibility and efficiency, while the entire industry benefits from improved resiliency of the global payments infrastructure.
“It is a major milestone in improving and standardizing the international, large value payments infrastructure,” said Don Monks, Senior Executive Vice President of The Bank of New York. “Having both options available raises the bar in the area of business continuity and resiliency for all payment systems.”
CHIPS and SWIFT are major, bank-owned components of the global payments infrastructure. CHIPS processes $1.3 trillion per day in U.S. dollar transactions internationally and in the U.S. domestic market. Today CHIPS uses an X.25 standard and later this year will be moving to a TCP/IP protocol as well as offering the SWIFTNet option. SWIFT supplies secure, standardized messaging services and interface software to 7,500 financial institutions in 200 countries and offers TCP/IP communications connectivity through SWIFTNet.
“This is great news for our community,” says SWIFT CEO, Leonard H. Schrank. “CHIPS is one of the oldest and best known bank owned market infrastructures. Our mutual members will realize significant benefits from this decision to use SWIFTNet.”
CHIPS customers will be able to connect to CHIPS and other payment systems managed by The Clearing House over standard connections provided by either The Clearing House or by SWIFT. The improved connectivity options will be available for new and existing CHIPS customers by the end of this year
“These network choices are consistent with what banks around the world need today to increase efficiency and improve their telecommunications resiliency.” said John Mohr, CHIPS Chief Operating Officer. “And, it is part of our strategy to Internet and IP-enable all of our payment systems.”