Swift is working with 14 banks, payment schemes, and technology providers on a way to send money abroad to a mobile phone number or email address instead of the recipient’s account details. The cooperative announced the initiative on September 28, 2026. It draws on three domestic systems where millions of consumers already pay without knowing the recipient’s account: Bizum in Spain, PayID from Australian Payments Plus (AP+) in Australia, and Pix in Brazil.
The approach will enable identifiers “that are already captured in domestic systems—like mobile phone numbers, email and virtual payment addresses—to be securely matched for international transactions over Swift,” the cooperative said. The project is not in production. Swift gave no launch date, named no payment corridors, and did not say which participant would handle which step. Bizum, one of the participants, calls it “Swift’s proof of concept.”
Two scheme operators and 10 banks, without Brazil’s central bank
Swift names 14 participating organizations from four continents. Two run domestic schemes, Bizum and AP+. Ten are banks: BBVA and Caixabank in Spain, Bradesco and Ouribank in Brazil, Banorte in Mexico, Banco de Crédito del Perú, Citizens Bank in the US, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Singapore’s DBS, and India’s IDFC FIRST Bank. TerraPay and Veritran complete the list. Banco Central do Brasil, which operates Pix, is not on it. Brazil is represented by two banks. By “connecting Brazil’s Pix ecosystem to Swift’s global network,” Ouribank is “helping build a simpler, faster and more secure way of moving money across borders,” said Bruno Foresti, the bank’s treasury director.
| System | Operator | Aliases used at home | Participants from that market |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bizum (Spain) | Bizum, backed by Spain’s main banks | Mobile phone number | Bizum, BBVA, Caixabank |
| PayID (Australia) | Australian Payments Plus (AP+) | Mobile number, email address, Australian Business Number, or organization identifier | AP+, Commonwealth Bank of Australia |
| Pix (Brazil) | Banco Central do Brasil | Tax ID (CPF or CNPJ), mobile number, email address, or random key | Bradesco, Ouribank (the central bank is not a participant) |
Swift turns to the first step of a cross-border payment
“We’re on a mission to make sending money abroad as simple as sending it at home,” said Juan Martinez, managing director of Swift’s Payments Platform. “Now we’re going further—innovating with our community to remove complexity at the very first click, so people can send money abroad with greater confidence.” In March, Swift had said more work was needed “in the front-end and final domestic leg” of cross-border payments to improve the end-to-end experience.
“Australians are already accustomed to using PayID to send money using a mobile number or email address, without needing to remember bank account details,” said Lynn Kraus, chief executive of AP+. Fernando Rodríguez, Bizum’s deputy managing director of international expansion, said the proof of concept is “an important step towards connecting these solutions and enabling people to send and receive money easily between Spain and other continents.”
The next phase of the retail framework launched in June
Swift presents the alias work as the next step for its consumer payments scheme. That framework commits participating banks to full-value transfer, greater predictability, and the fastest possible settlement. When Swift announced it on March 5, 2026, it expected more than 25 banks to go live by the end of June on corridors to 11 markets, including Spain and Australia but not Brazil. Swift says the framework, launched in June, now involves more than 100 banks. Swift also says 75% of all payments over its network now reach the receiving bank within 10 minutes. That figure measures arrival at the receiving bank, not necessarily final credit to the customer’s account, TNGlobal notes.
Alias directories built at national scale
Pix had 998 million registered keys at the end of August 2026, held by 186.3 million users, according to Banco Central do Brasil open data. Mobile numbers accounted for 165.5 million keys and email addresses for 143.4 million. Bizum reports 31.5 million active users on its website. They can already send money by phone number to contacts in Portugal and Italy through EuroPA, a collaboration initiative among payment solutions, Bizum says.