Citi allows corporate clients to track the trajectories of their digital payments

As digital business payments surge during the pandemic, Citibank is helping its clients gain more visibility into payment paths, reminiscent of the process to track shipments of physical goods.

Why should we care?
Banks that oversee digital business payments face pressure to make B2B business payments as seamless and easy as digital peer-to-peer consumer payments, with added security and tracking information. Through an offering called Citi Service Insights, the bank is now allowing corporate clients granular-level detail of where their cross-border payments are on the SWIFT system, which is a cross-border network of banks through which international payments travel to get to the payment recipient. While using such a network, many factors can hold up a payment, and the offering avails businesses of opportunities to understand where a payment is and what might be causing a delay. SWIFT is also making moves to speed up its processing times, through a tool called Swift gpi, which allows transactions to settle within a day or even within minutes, with added tracking information. Citi Service Insights builds on an earlier offering called Citi Payments Insights, which integrates with Swift gpi, and includes case resolution capabilities. “Frictionless, secure and instant account-to-account payments are at the heart of SWIFT’s new strategy and so making exceptions and investigations easier to manage is vital for us,” SWIFT’s Chief Executive of the Americas and U.K. David Scola said in a statement.