In member research late last year, PaymentsJournal explained an initiative (IXB) launched in 2021 between TCH, EBA Clearing and SWIFT to bring real-time cross border payments between the U.S. RTP system and Europe’s RT1.
The initiative is called IXB (Immediate Cross-Border) and yesterday a new article on the TCH website announced that the pilot is on track for live processing of Euro and U.S. dollar exchanges in real-time during the coming months. This is an example of private organizations combining expertise to deliver a highly anticipated new service. As we have highlighted on PaymentsJournal, there are several initiatives attempting the same thing in various regions. So this is an exciting development for one of the high volume global trade corridors.
The article goes on to explain that 25 financial institutions on both sides of the pond have been closely cooperating with the IXB pilot initiative in order to take the pilot service live and into full commercial rollout during 2023. Although no specific timeframe is mentioned, the article also states that additional currency corridors will be added closely following the rollout, so it is clear that a more global service for major corridors is in the end game for the IXB service. One can only speculate, but likely priorities would be other high volume corridors (e.g.; Asia Pacific).
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group.
