SWIFT announces today that it has been awarded a license to provide ESMIG connectivity services from November 2021, as a Network Service Provider for the Eurosystem’s TARGET Services.

SWIFT’s appointment through the Eurosystem’s public tender process evidences both trust and confidence in SWIFT’s services as well as SWIFT’s own commitment to supporting Market Infrastructures and in driving modernisation. SWIFT supports 254 domestic and pan-regional payment systems across the world.

Alain Raes, Chief Executive EMEA and Asia Pacific, SWIFT, said: “We are delighted to become a Network Service Provider for all TARGET Services. We take our role in this major infrastructure project very seriously and are already working with both the Eurosystem and our customers to raise market awareness about the tight timeline and to ensure a smooth and successful community migration.”

As one of two providers selected by the Eurosystem, SWIFT is committed to supporting its customers through their TARGET consolidation projects and the migration to ESMIG. SWIFT will provide high quality and competitively priced access to TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) for instant payments, TARGET2 (T2) for high value payments, TARGET2-Securities (T2S) for securities settlement, and the future Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS).

Combining SWIFT’s ESMIG connectivity offering with its existing connectivity to EBA CLEARING’s EURO1/STEP1, RT1 and STEP2 services, means banks can use SWIFT to process all of their euro payments – high-value, SEPA, instant and cross-border– in a secure, reliable and cost-efficient manner.

By using SWIFT to connect to all TARGET Services, users will future-proof and maximise their investment, gaining a single-window for connectivity. SWIFT will be offering customers a range of products and services designed to help them be fully prepared for the big bang migration of TARGET2 RTGS traffic to ISO 20022 in November 2021. These will include standards (ISO20022) validation services, standards translation and testing capabilities. To provide more information on its offering around the TARGET consolidation project and ISO 20022 migration, SWIFT will be reaching out to the TARGET community through a series of events and meetings. 

SWIFT encourages the industry to look at and plan this migration in conjunction with other ISO 20022 migrations happening in the same timeframe, both in the Market Infrastructure space (EBA CLEARING’s EURO1, The Bank of England’s CHAPS, the US Federal Reserve’s Fedwire, The Clearing House (TCH) and others) as well as in the cross-border payments area, where the migration to ISO 20022 is scheduled to start in November 2021.