DBS launches solution for businesses to track cross-border collections in real time

DBS has launched a solution for corporate clients in Singapore and Hong Kong to track cross-border collections, or inward payments in real time, providing them with greater digital convenience.

More than 240,000 DBS corporate and small and medium-sized enterprises will be the first to utilise the solution, which is powered by Swift Global Payments Innovation (gpi), the bank said on Wednesday.

DBS targets to expand this offering to its other core markets in China, India, Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam in the coming months.

The latest move builds on the bank's launch of a real-time digital cross-border outward payment tracking solution in 2018.

According to DBS, its market share of Swift cross-border payments across its core markets increased by 4 per cent year on year.

Raof Latiff, DBS's group head of digital for institutional banking, said the real-time tracking of cross-border payments and collections helps businesses improve their working capital management and fosters trust with overseas counterparties.

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"This in turn helps improve supply chain efficiencies and encourages economic growth, enabling countries to bounce back faster from the pandemic," he added.

Eddie Haddad, managing director for Asia-Pacific at Swift, said the new online inbound gpi capability will give corporates "more control of their entire payment flows".

Traditionally, the tracking of cross-border collections tends to be highly manual, where corporates often rely on a copy of Swift message from the remitter, which confirms that their remittance instruction has been processed by their bank. For interim updates, corporates have to depend on their bank or the remitter to find out the latest status of the transfer across multiple banks, which may be tedious, costly and time-consuming, DBS said.

With the bank's Swift gpi solution, corporates can log into its online corporate banking portal, DBS Ideal, to get instant updates on where the incoming funds are in the cross-border payment chain, DBS noted.

In markets where regulations require additional information or supporting documents for cross-border transfers, businesses can use DBS DigiDocs to transmit these digitally and instantly, which reduces the need for paper-intensive processes, DBS said. This digital solution is available in China, India, Vietnam and is expected to be launched in Indonesia and Taiwan over the next few months, the bank added.

"With real-time visibility to incoming cash flows, corporates are able to optimise their working capital management and utilise their cash more effectively," DBS said. It added that businesses can fulfil their commercial obligations more quickly by releasing goods upon receiving payment from the overseas counterparty. This would optimise inventory and cash cycles, building more efficient supply chains, the lender noted.

Separately, in September this year, UOB launched its digital solution UOB Infinity for its corporate clients.

UOB said customers can log in to UOB Infinity to track both cross-border inbound collections and outbound payments in real time.

OCBC also said it allows clients to track the real-time status of outgoing and incoming cross border payments through its OCBC Velocity portal.