Letting Financial Institutions Put-Together a High-Performing and More Transparent Payment Infrastructure

Human beings do have the means to be good at a myriad of things, but at the same time, we still cannot do anything better than growing on a consistent basis. This progressive approach, on our part, has already got the world to hit upon some huge milestones, with technology appearing as a major member of the stated group. The reason why technology enjoys such an esteemed stature among people is, by and large, predicated upon its skill-set, which guided us towards a reality that nobody could have ever imagined otherwise. Nevertheless, if we look up close for a second, it will become clear how the whole runner was also very much inspired from the way we applied those skills across a real-world environment. The latter component was, in fact, what gave the creation a spectrum-wide presence, and consequentially, kickstarted a tech revolution. Of course, this revolution then went on to scale up the human experience through some outright unique avenues, but even after achieving such a monumental feat, technology will somehow continue to produce the right goods. The same has grown increasingly evident over the recent past, and assuming one new fintech-themed development shakes out just like we envision, it will only make that trend bigger and better moving forward.

Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTC) has officially announced the launch of four payment solutions for Financial Institution (FI) clients. According to certain reports, the stated solutions are designed to help financial institutions in delivering an expanded offering at the disposal of their own customers. But what do these solutions bring to the fore on a rather practical level? Well, for starters, they extend the capabilities of Citi’s 24/7 USD Clearing for FIs, therefore enabling them to include payments to companies and individuals. Now, while this would generally involve bank-to-bank payments, Citi’s latest effort goes one step ahead by helping users make commercial payments (payments processed on behalf of banks’ underlying retail and corporate clients). The potential impact of such a feature, in turn, is instantly contextualized once you consider how the company’s 24/7 USD Clearing service has already earned more than 100 clients since its launch in 2022. Next up, we have a new Confirmed Value Transfer capability, which encourages greater transparency on associated deducted fees ahead of initiating a transaction when there are multiple parties involved in processing a USD cross-border payment. The incentive to put CVT in place talks to how it can seamlessly standardize, give the sending institution an up-front view of the value of such downstream deductions, and as a result, build stronger trust between all parties. Another detail worth a mention here is that the users of Citi’s new payment products will need only a single executive amount to initiate payments in more than 70 different countries worldwide. Given this far-reaching nature, an institution can expand currency processing capabilities for their customers in a cost-efficient manner.

“This new set of solutions aims to improve current capabilities for clients, and has been designed to enhance their client experience, lower costs, and increase speed and transparency as well. We are pleased to help our clients decrease complexity provided through these kinds of solutions, while remaining laser-focused on ease of adoption, scalability and immediate impact on the end customer experience,” said Dawid Janas, Global Head of FI Payments and Clearing at Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions.

Hold on, there is more. In order to uphold its pledge of reaching as many people as possible, Citi has formalized a partnership with Swift, a partnership where it will be able to bank upon the latter’s Swift Go payment service to process clients’ request. Simultaneously, it should come in handy when offering same clients the benefits of this service without mandating any explicit implementation legwork on the their part.

Moving on to what makes Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) an ideal candidate for such an initiative, the answer to that is rooted in its ability to provide an integrated suite of innovative and tailored cash management and trade finance services to multinational corporations, financial institutions, and public sector organizations across the globe. If you still need convincing, then we must acknowledge that the entity, at present, is driven by the industry’s largest proprietary network with banking licenses in over 90 countries.

“We are committed to help our FI clients grow and succeed by providing fully embedded solutions that empower them to more rapidly drive digital transformation, delivering next-gen experiences to their underlying clients,” said Will Artingstall, Global Co-Head of Cross-Border Payments at Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions.