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SWIFT launches SWIFTRef, a family of products that aims to eliminate costly payment errors arising from bad data, and increase straight-through-processing (STP).

Thirty percent of non-STP payments are caused by bad reference data, and with manual intervention to correct the details of the payment costing between 20 and 40 Euros per incident, this problem amounts to millions of Euros potentially lost each day. The costs to the financial services industry could be worth billions of Euros globally each year, says SWIFT.

Currently, customers buy similar products from multiple suppliers because of the gaps in the market and differing levels of quality.

SWIFT says its new suite of products will give users a one-stop shop which allows them to identify their payment counterparties with confidence, thanks to modernised directories offering comprehensive and quality data contained in flexible relational databases. This data will be available much faster via the cloud and web services technology.

This will save financial institutions and corporations time and money they spend on data sourcing, cleansing and reconciliation.

SWIFTRef will help the cooperative widen its addressable market for reference data. The products are aimed at the 3,500 or so banks which process a significant amount of international payments and the many corporations that also comprise this market.

SWIFTRef products will be sold directly by SWIFT's sales teams and also through partners via the indirect sales channel.

"The issue of poor reference data is only getting worse because of the sheer increase in global payments being made," says Patrik Neutjens, Head of Reference Data at SWIFT.

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