Financial technology provider Ant International, Standard Chartered Bank and financial messaging platform Swift have collaborated to launch live production trials for a new bank-to-bank wallet solution using ISO 20022 financial messaging standards.

ISO 20022 is an open, global financial messaging standard that uses rich, structured Extensible Markup Language (XML) based data to facilitate more detailed and standardised communication between financial institutions, aiming to create a common language for payments.

The companies confirmed that live trials have already initiated between a Standard Chartered bank account and an electronic wallet supported by Ant International's wallet gateway service Alipay+ using Swift infrastructure. The companies confirmed that the first transactions have been successfully completed.

With the move, the firms said they are seeking to further expand payment options in the financial ecosystem by leveraging the benefits of ISO 20022 messaging standards and using Swift's infrastructure to boost scalability and interoperability.

The trials usesleverage Swift's network of over 11,500 financial institutions in more than 200 countries and territories to connect to 1.7 billion user accounts across 36 global digital wallets in the Alipay+ ecosystem, particularly in fast-growing Asian markets.

Michael Spiegel, global head of transaction banking at Standard Chartered, said: “We will continue to push the boundaries of finance to shape the future of our industry, securely and in compliance with regulatory requirements.”

Swift emphasised the move aims to provide more choice and optionality in customers’ international payments experience.

“This collaboration with Ant International and Standard Chartered reflects that strategic commitment to faster, frictionless payments across multiple networks,” said Kevin Wong, chief executive, Asia Pacific, at Swift.

Earlier this week, Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore said it is set to launch an AI-powered treasury and foreign exchange (FX) management system developed in partnership with Ant International.


The collaboration will integrate Ant International’s Falcon Time-Series Transformer (TST) Model with Standard Chartered’s Aggregated Liquidity Engine (SCALE).

The resulting technology aims to help businesses mitigate costs and FX volatility when transacting cross borders.

The bank said the technology enables seamless data exchange that leads to AI-Powered FX forecasting in real time around the clock.

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