SWIFT plans to launch a Swift Lite service at this year’s Sibos in Vienna in September. Smaller corporates and SMEs who want to access the Swift network for routing payment initiations to their banks will be provided with a USB memory stick, which provides secure virtual private network access to a web server at SWIFT.
Once the connection application on the memory stick is activated, the corporates can send payment instructions to SWIFT in whatever format their financial systems generate. SWIFT will receive the instruction, translate it to the relevant SWIFT message format and send it to the desired bank over SwiftNet.
Marc Braet, SWIFT’s regional director for Northern and Central Europe, says that SWIFT will be distributing demo versions of SWIFT Lite at Sibos. The service is aimed at smaller corporates that don’t want to make the investment in connecting to SwiftNet themselves.
Swift also says it intends to develop a similar offering for small to mid-sized fund managers.
The new interface device was first trailled by Swift CEO Lazaro Campos at Sibos in Boston last year.