Manama, Bahrain – 24 April 2019 – The Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) in coordination with SWIFT organized a workshop for the Kingdom of Bahrain’s SWIFT User Group community on its Payments Landscape on 24th April 2019. The workshop was attended by 80 representatives from financial institutions and focused on the importance of security at institution and industry level.
SWIFT presented to the audience its SWIFT global payments innovation (gpi) offering. Historically, cross-border payments have been relatively slow, lacking in transparency and suffered unpredictable fees. The imperative to improve customer service in the cross-border space brought leading banks together with SWIFT to create the gpi initiative. Objectives from the outset have been to deliver same day use of funds, transparency of fees, end-to-end payments tracking and the unaltered transfer of remittance information.
As a complement to its gpi offering SWIFT also introduced its Payment Controls, a new solution for fraud prevention and detection, which is an integral part of the SWIFT’s Customer Security Programme (CSP). It will help protect banks and their counterparties by efficiently flagging and intercepting suspicious payments.
SWIFT Payment Controls is easy to implement and simple to use. SWIFT users can access it instantly, with no installation of either hardware or software required.
Yousef Al Fadhel, Executive Director of Corporate Services at CBB and Chairperson of Bahrain’s SWIFT User-Group, commented “Complying with the CSP recommendations and utilizing the SWIFT offering optimally will greatly facilitate improved and secure business processes that enhance our ability to respond to the rapid changing environment and also enhance Bahrain’s regional competitive edge in payment systems.”
The workshop was held as part of an ongoing awareness campaign led by the CBB in coordination with concerned parties from the financial sector in an effort to implement the latest security practices and controls in order to maintain the integrity of the banking and financial system.