SWIFT India announces its launch in India

BANGALORE, INDIA: SWIFT India Domestic Services ("SWIFT India") today announced its official launch in India, marking a new era for the domestic financial services industry.

SWIFT India is a member-owned cooperative created by the Indian community, together with SWIFT, and is fully committed to serving and addressing domestic market needs. The partners include leading public and private banks (in alphabetical order): Axis Bank, Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of India and Union Bank of India.

SWIFT India will set a solid foundation for India's economic growth and technological innovation by providing a highly reliable, secure and reusable domestic messaging platform for efficient and harmonised exchange of financial information between banks, corporates and market infrastructures. It is expected to deploy domestic messaging services by the end of 2014.

Using world-class and proven SWIFT technology, SWIFT India will offer deep expertise and experience in international standards and best practices, along with facilitating an active industry dialogue on areas where the community can collaborate to better serve India's growing population of market participants.

As most banks in India already have SWIFT connectivity or interfaces for cross-border messaging, they can reuse their SWIFT infrastructure for domestic messaging over SWIFT India, which allows individual banks and the financial community as a whole to significantly reduce complexity and costs. This also reduces systemic risks and improves service to bank customers and market infrastructures in India.

M V Nair, chairman of the Board, SWIFT India, said: "The Indian financial services market is diverse and vibrant, growing at a steady pace towards the next wave of transformation. With such dynamic growth, India needs the robust world-class platform that SWIFT India will provide, and that's why our institutions have come together to make it a reality."