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What is SWIFT?
SWIFT stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. It is a messaging network that financial institutions use to securely transmit information and instructions through a standardized system of codes either between themselves or between them and their corporate customers who are registered on SWIFT.
Zenith Bank has been a member of SWIFT network since June 1998.
Benefits of SWIFT for Corporates/SCORE
SCORE(Standardized Corporate Environment) enables corporates to use SWIFT's single, secure, and reliable messaging platform to access the SWIFT services that their financial institutions supports (e.g. FIN service, FileAct service etc.). SCORE is based on a Closed User Group that caters for financial messaging between corporates and financial institutions. Once registered to use Standardized Corporate Environment, a financial institution can interact with any corporate that is also registered in the Closed User Group. Conversely, a corporate registered in the Closed User Group can interact with any financial institution that is a member of Standardized Corporate Environment. Some key benefits include:
- Reduced costs and risks with SWIFT global standard messages for straight through processing
- Standardized communications such that banks and corporates won’t have to invest in/maintain multiple platforms and secured connections to various institutions
- Improve responsiveness
- Reduced processing errors
About Zenith Bank SWIFTPay Payment Solution
The Zenith Bank SWIFTPay solution offers our corporate customers a platform to initiate payment instructions from their ERP. The payment instruction is transmitted to Zenith Bank via the SWIFT network. SWIFT guarantees the security of the messages within its network and ensures it’s delivered safely to Zenith Bank for payments execution.
Zenith Bank SWIFTNet Payment Service Options
The following are two of the SWIFTNet Services that are supported by Zenith bank for corporates who want to make payments to its beneficiaries via the SWIFT network: FIN and FileAct Services.
FIN Service
FIN enables financial institutions to exchange individual structured (MT and ISO 15022 message formats) financial messages securely and reliably. Zenith Bank SWIFTPay solution currently supports the MT101 message format. MT101 is a SWIFT message format used for making payments via the SWIFT FIN service. MT101 SWIFT payments are also known as international wire transfers or telegraphic transfers. The FIN service is particularly suitable for corporate customers who will be making single payments to beneficiaries usually in small file sizes.
REQUIREMENTS / FEATURES
The following are the requirements and features of the SWIFT FIN service option for payments:
- Corporate customer is expected to be registered on SWIFT with a unique SWIFT ID as well as be a member of SCORE (Standardized Corporate Environment). Alternatively, a corporate that is not registered on SCORE may choose to ride on the SWIFT BIC of a financial institution which the corporate would have nominated to act as forwarding party for its payment instructions.
BIC stands for Bank Identifier Code. A BIC is sometimes called a SWIFT code, SWIFT BIC or SWIFT ID (all of these mean the same thing). A SWIFT BIC consists of 8-11 characters used to identify a specific bank in an international transaction, so as to ensure the money is going to the right place.
- The Corporate customer and Zenith bank will sign a SWIFT MT101 BILATERAL AGREEMENT which is a physical document. SWIFT has registered and published the accession of Signatories to the Service Level Master Agreement (“SLMA”) for any two parties who are at the verge of using this service.
- The Corporate customer and Zenith bank will execute an RMA key exchange. SWIFT's RMA plays an important part in supporting communication between different financial institutions or parties. The RMAis a SWIFT-mandated filter that enables financial institutions to define which counterparties can send them FIN messages such as MT101 messages.
- Having met the pre-requisites above, the corporate customer can generate MT101 messages from its ERP and transmit same to Zenith bank via the SWIFT network. The MT101 messages are validated by SWIFT before it is delivered to Zenith bank, and payments are then made to the beneficiaries.
- Having executed the payment instructions received, Zenith bank will deliver the customer’s statement of account(s) to the corporate customer’s ERP via the SWIFT FIN service in SWIFT MT940 statement format. Most ERP’s will use this MT940 to achieve auto-reconciliation of all payments made on this platform.
FileAct Service
FileAct enables financial institutions to exchange bulk payment files securely and reliably. This consist of two files: the PayLoad file (Pain001- Customer Credit Transfer Initiation) and the Response File (Pain002 – Customer Payment Status Report). Zenith bank supports the ISO 20022 XML message format for these files.
FileAct is particularly suitable for corporate customers who will be making bulk payments to several beneficiaries. When you need a secure, reliable and efficient way to transfer large files of data, FileAct is the solution. FileAct is a SWIFT service for transferring large files of structured messages. It’s also the messaging service to choose for large-scale reporting tasks. Files of almost any format or size may be sent, up to hundreds of MB. FileAct provides the security and reliability your business demands, including the highest availability in the industry. FileAct also offers non-repudiation; on request, SWIFT will re-verify a file signature to prove its origin. The diagram below illustrates the transfer of the Payload pain001 file (File Transfer) from the corporate customer to Zenith Bank and the response Pain002 file (ACK) from Zenith bank to the corporate customer.
REQUIREMENTS / FEATURES
The following are the requirements and features for using the SWIFT FIN service option for payments:
- Corporate customer is expected to be registered on SWIFT with a unique SWIFT ID as well as be a member of SCORE (Standardized Corporate Environment) with a Requestor DN and Responder DN which are distinguished names assigned to it by SWIFT for this service.
- The Corporate customer and Zenith bank will sign a SCORE AGREEMENT which is a physical document. SWIFT has registered and published the accession of Signatories to the Service Level Master Agreement (“SLMA”) for any two parties who are at the verge of using this service.
- Having met the pre-requisites above, the Corporate can generate Pain001 payment file from its ERP and send same to Zenith bank via the SWIFT network. The Pain001 file is delivered by SWIFT to Zenith bank for validation. Zenith Bank sends a file-level Pain002 response message with an ACTC (Accepted Technical Validation) response if the Pain001 payment file is successfully validated or a RJCT (Rejected) response if otherwise.
- Zenith bank executes the payment instructions contained in the file after which a transaction-level pain002 response message is sent to the corporate customer via SWIFT.
- Having executed the payments, Zenith bank will deliver the customer’s statement of accounts to the corporate customer’s ERP via the SWIFT FIN service in SWIFT MT940 statement format. Most ERP’s will use this MT940 to achieve auto-reconciliation of all payments made on this platform.
CONTACT DETAILS
Email: zenithdirect@zenithbank.com
Telephone +234 1 278 7000
Telephone +234 1 292 7000
Frequently Asked Questions
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