From the inception of electronic payments to today’s real-time and cloud-driven payments, we help clients be at the forefront of payments innovation. 

Our foray into the world of payments began in the 1970s when we reviewed the design for SWIFT—the world’s first electronic payments exchange infrastructure—and developed SWIFT interface solutions for clients. This began 40+ years of work in partnering with financial institutions to modernize and digitize payments, enabling their customers to benefit from easier, faster and more secure payments. 

Today, we support our clients in transferring more than US$21 trillion in financial payments every day, including real-time payments. In addition, our services help clients process:

  • 40% of global foreign exchange settlements
  • 35% of U.S. FedWire transactions
  • 20% of SWIFT payment transactions
  • $500 billion per day through central market infrastructures 

Building the world’s largest payment schemes

How did this all begin? Our payments innovation expanded from SWIFT to the support of many other major payment infrastructures in 20+ countries over the past 5 decades. Here’s a brief review of that work:

  • Designed and built the UK’s Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS)
  • Transitioned CHAPS to real-time gross settlement (RTGS), while also building Ireland’s first RTGS infrastructure
  • Designed and developed an interface for the global Continuous Linked Settlement (CLS) system, which revolutionized the foreign exchange of payments, and built a CLS system’s integration framework and other related solutions
  • Supported the UK’s Faster Payments program and began extensive work on the European Union’s Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), which manages the exchange of electronic payments across the EU
  • Worked on the launch of the UK’s Payments Council, the UK’s Mobile Payments Service, the EU’s Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2), and request-to-pay in the UK
  • Developed the first bank interface for The Federal Reserve’s FedWire network and supported the first electronic wire transaction in the U.S.; more recently, we helped one of our clients become the first cloud-based bank to process Fedwire payments
  • Participated as a service provider in The Federal Reserve’s FedNow ServiceSM pilot
  • Selected by the bank-owned company, P27 Nordic Payments, to build a payments infrastructure for national and cross-border payments used by 27 million people who use Nordic currencies

Advancing real-time payments

Real-time payments are revolutionizing global commerce by enabling the immediate transfer of money without the need for traditional clearance and settlement times. Countries across the globe have adopted or are adopting real-time payment schemes, and banks are working to modernize their payment infrastructures to adapt. 

Our flagship solution, CGI All Payments, provides the technology for instantaneous end-to-end payment processing in several of today’s financial markets, and is cloud proven, enabling banks to securely transition their payment processing from data centers to the cloud. 

As the global payment ecosystem continues to evolve rapidly, we are pleased to help our clients be at the forefront of successfully navigating this change. We help financial institutions worldwide to assess and implement new payment schemes to drive their competitive advantage. Learn more about our payments work and capabilities, and about our insights you can act on approach.