Bank of America says it will launch a real-time cross-border payments service for corporate, commercial, and financial-institution clients in the third quarter, letting them send and receive funds almost instantly through Swift or the bank’s CashPro platform. The bank says the service links into domestic instant-payment systems including the UK’s Faster Payments, India’s UPI, and Mexico’s SPEI, and is aimed at high-volume, low-value flows like remittances, gig-economy payouts, and e-commerce payments.
Even though this is built for institutions, not retail users, it’s another sign that cross-border payments are being pushed away from the old minutes-to-days model toward near-instant settlement. Faster back-end rails can eventually mean quicker payouts, quicker merchant settlement, and more pressure on slower, more expensive international payment options.
Bank of America’s Ripple-tied cross-border rail moving from launch into real volume is the near-term tell.