Cross-border transfers over SWIFT’s global payments innovation (gpi) topped $77 trillion last year, almost double the $40 trillion that moved through the service in 2018, SWIFT announced on Tuesday (Feb. 11).

The payments messaging firm also said it had over 3,900 gpi members and that live gpi country corridors nearly doubled to more than 1,900. Almost 65 percent of SWIFT’s cross-border payments were sent using gpi.

“Over the past year, our community has increasingly recognized the dramatically improved speed, certainty and overall cross-border experience gpi delivers, and so we have seen a significant uptick in adoption, value transferred and the number of live corridors,” said Carlo Palmers, head of payment market infrastructures for SWIFT.

“And we are not stopping there – by combining gpi and domestic real-time payments networks, SWIFT is facilitating instant international payments with fee and foreign exchange transparency,” he added. “The technology is in place, it is proven and is paving the way for reliable, real-time, round-the-clock cross-border payments.”

Since gpi was introduced three years ago, it has experienced wide adoption and is “proving to be the new normal in cross-border payments,” SWIFT said.

Using gpi, payments can happen in minutes or even seconds, and banks can track their payment streams in real time.

The share of cross-border messages using gpi escalated from 15 percent at the start of 2018 to 56 percent by the end of 2019, a year-on-year increase of 270 percent. In 2018, SWIFT said that over $300 billion is sent every day in 148 currencies.

An average of 40 percent of SWIFT gpi payments are credited to end beneficiaries within five minutes. About half are credited within 30 minutes, 75 percent within six hours and almost 100 percent within 24 hours.

In September, SWIFT announced that its gpi service could be integrated into domestic real-time payment systems, enabling banks to wield gpi for real-time cross-border payments. The capability focuses on boosting the transparency of foreign exchange and other fees for payers while promoting ubiquity by operating a real-time payments service on existing rails.