Earlier this week 25 board members found out that Gottfried Leibbrandt, the CEO of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) wanted to step down from his position by June 2019. With Leibbrandt leaving the firm, this will mark a seven-year term in the position as the Chief executive Officer of the global financial services provider after he joined the company back in 2012.

Leibbrandt went on to sum up his experience at SWIFT by saying, “Swift is in very different shape than it was seven years ago. There’s always going to be a time to hand over the reins and write a new chapter. I think this is indeed the right time.”

Over the past few years, there has been plenty of startups in the fintech sector which have tackled cross-border payments by using blockchain technology and digital currencies. One firm is one that was founded in 2012, Ripple Labs for the development of their payment protocols which the company is known for. Over the years, the firm went on to provide several payment services for global banks and financial institutions including RippleNet, xRapid, xCurrent and xVia. These services provide more efficient options for cross-border transfers which aren’t just cheaper but quicker too. It's worth noting that the services are much more secure than the other available options on SWIFT.

The need for the SWIFT system to be more secure got more serious after hackers ran away with $81 million in 2016. They did this after they sent false instructions through SWIFT to a Federal Reserve Bank in New York. The theft involved the hackers to request the bank to send funds owned by the Bangladesh Central Bank to their accounts located somewhere in the Philippines.

As reported by Ethereum World News:

“The criminals had sent out a total of 35 fraudulent transfer instructions but only 5 went through until a spelling mistake raised some eyebrows at the Federal Bank in New York. Most of the money transferred went to four personal accounts held by single individuals. Mr. Leibbrandt reacted to the cyber heist by hiring several developers and kick starting a modernization program at SWIFT.”

One result of modernisation efforts was the new SWIFT global payments innovation system (gpi) which was developed on the SWIFT platform. This was to make sure that the payments through the platform were trackable and quick. As explained by the team behind SWIFT, “the Tracker database, in the Cloud but securely hosted at SWIFT, gives end-to-end visibility on the status of a payment transaction from when it is sent and until it is confirmed.

SWIFT gpi banks can log in to the Tracker to check the status of the payments they have sent, those in progress and those that have been received.”

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