From retail payments to blockchain
Transcription:
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.
Joey Pizzolato (00:11):
Hi, I’m Joey Pizzolato with American Banker reporting from SIBOS in Miami. I’m here with Leigh Amaro, Swift’s Chief Executive of the Americas. Leigh, thanks so much for being here today.
Leigh Amaro (00:20):
Thank you for having me.
Joey Pizzolato (00:22):
Swift has been really busy this year. You have two new big initiatives, including your blockchain ledger and your new retail payment scheme. I’d love to get an update on how those are progressing.
Leigh Amaro (00:31):
Yeah, it’s such an exciting time in the pace of change and innovation. So this scheme, we’ve successfully announced 50 live institutions on this scheme. We’re tracking towards a hundred by the end of the year. And the scheme promise is really transformational. It’s knowing when your payment is going to arrive, the amount that it’s going to arrive at, any upfront fees to that payment. I think of it like yesterday I took a Waymo for the first time in Miami, and I think of it like a Waymo ride. When you order your Waymo, you know what the fee’s going to be, when it’s going to arrive, and how long it’s going to take to your destination. And that’s really the brand promise of the scheme is leading with that up-leveled customer experience and journey. And ledger is the same, just a different use case and new technology.
(01:13):
So the scheme is current technology up-leveling that experience, that Waymo-like experience. The ledger is new technology, but same brand promise of that vision of 24 by seven real settlement. For right now, tokenized deposits is the first use case with more use cases to come.
Joey Pizzolato (01:30):
Your new payment scheme was launched this year. Can you give us an update on how that rollout is progressing and where your priorities lie for the year ahead?
Leigh Amaro (01:37):
Yeah. So with the payment scheme, again, it’s so exciting. We have 50 live. We have progress to get to 100 by end of the year with that broader brand promise of speed, traceability, transparency. But it’s what’s really exciting though, as I think about my kids, how they send money, they send it to aliases, they send it to phone numbers and email addresses. And so that’s really that next phase of the scheme. We can send today to traditional banking account numbers, to wallets, but how those next use cases evolve is really important to us. So we’ve announced some great partnerships to move forward to an alias-like model. Again, sending to phone numbers or sending to email addresses is really uplifting that end experience so you’re not just using your traditional checking account number, but how you and I now exchange information and exchange credentials.
Joey Pizzolato (02:24):
Swift’s blockchain ledger has also gained momentum. Can you tell us a little bit about how that’s progressing and what chips need to fall into place to really get that to hit critical mass?
Leigh Amaro (02:33):
I am so impressed with the progress we’ve made. We only launched it nine months ago, and then yesterday at our opening we announced we have 19 committed financial institutions. That’s pretty transformational and a rapid pace of change for the community overall. So I’m very proud of the Swift community for coming together and really up leveling this experience. So that first phase, as I said, is tokenized deposits, which we’re moving rapidly towards. We have eight markets live across five currencies. The use cases are really complex as well. So it’s not just corporate use cases, it’s financial institution, bank to bank use cases, settlement use cases. So that momentum is there. And now we’re thinking about what’s next, right? Programmable money has so many options, whether it comes to payments or security. So that’s really the community now coming together, bringing us those use cases and thinking about how can we continue to push that forward and get that pace of change to the market.
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