October 2019

The Saudi British Bank (SABB), third largest bank in Saudi Arabia, is pleased to announce going live with SWIFT gpi for Corporates service (g4c), making them the first bank in the MENAT region to offer this special service. As part of the early adopters of g4c program, SABB and one of the leading global corporates are now the first in the region to go live on the service.

The news comes on the heels of the official launch of g4c on 19 July by SWIFT. The service enables multi-banked corporates to initiate and track payments across banks directly from their treasury/payment systems. In developing SWIFT gpi for Corporates, SWIFT worked with leading banks, corporates and treasury software providers. SABB joins the elite group of more than 50 global institutions on this service.

The unique cross-industry collaboration builds on SWIFT’s global payments innovation (gpi) service to further enhance the cross-border payments experience. This new standard will enable application providers and banks to offer corporates better visibility and transparency, thereby improving certainty of payments, traceability, exception handling and reconciliation directly in their treasury operations.

Majed Najm, Deputy Managing Director, Corporate and Institutional Banking, The Saudi British Bank, says: “We are excited to be the first bank in the MENAT region offering SWIFT gpi for Corporates and joining the team of more than 50 elite global institutions that offer SWIFT gpi for Corporates. This addition to our offering better enables our corporate customers to process fast, efficient and transparent cross-border payments through a standardised gpi experience, which allows payment tracking and transparency directly through Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Treasury Management Systems. An increasing number of banks are offering SWIFT gpi tracking through their individual portals, which benefits companies track via bank specific platforms. However, for multi-national institutions, that have multiple local and international banking relationships, SWIFT g4c provides a centralized view of multi-banking information enabling to track their payments in one place.”

Onur Ozan, Head of the Middle East, Turkey & North Africa, SWIFT, says: “Banks around the world have embraced SWIFT gpi as the new standard for cross-border payments and are already delivering faster, more transparent and traceable payments to their customers. SWIFT gpi for Corporates takes this a step further, allowing corporates to track payments in real time and receive confirmation of credit in a consistent fashion, across multiple banks within their corporate treasury systems. This is exactly what corporates are looking for”