Spain sets benchmark for seamless cross-border payments through cross-industry collaboration

Spanish financial community is leading the way in one-leg-out payments and is demonstrating what is possible through close collaboration between industry stakeholders using technology that is already available.

By utilising the European Payment Council’s One-Leg-Out scheme, payments from over 100 different countries are reaching Spain in as little as 10 seconds. What’s more, their status can be tracked every step of the way, with Iberpay updating Swift’s tracking capabilities using an ‘on-behalf-of’ API – meaning 94% of Spanish banks payments can be tracked from start to finish.

The capabilities serve as an example of what can be achieved using existing payments infrastructure. Earlier this year banks around the world began rolling out a new framework from Swift for cross-border payments, which provides the best-in-class customer experience. Senders can benefit from upfront transparency on costs and FX rates, end-to-end transparency, a guarantee that the full value of a transfer will arrive in the recipient’s account, and the fastest possible settlement time.

Where a country has a domestic or SEPA-wide instant payments system are available – such as Iberpay in Spain – that settlement time could be seconds.

“Spanish financial community has once again demonstrated its ability to turn payment innovation into real market adoption. This progress has been possible thanks to a sector-wide approach, in which banks can rely on common, secure and interoperable infrastructures to develop new services for their customers. Our financial sector has long been a leader in market innovation, and we hope we can lead the way in demonstrating to the rest of the world what is possible when we work together”.

Juan Luis Encinas
CEO of Iberpay

Leading the way in Europe

Spain has played a pioneering role in this transformation by combining the capabilities of Swift, Iberpay and the financial community. In 2024, Iberpay became the first European payment system to process payments under the European Payments Council’s ‘One-Leg-Out’ OCT Inst scheme. That same year, the Spanish financial community became the first in Europe to adhere to the scheme on a majority basis, creating a national infrastructure prepared to process instant international payments at scale outside the euro payments area.

Swift’s new framework for retail cross-border payments helps address one of the key challenges in international payments: the so-called last mile, where many delays and frictions have traditionally occurred. By combining a consistent digital experience, common rules between the banks using the service and Iberpay’s instant payment system, payments can be completed in Spain in real time while providing greater visibility over the transaction journey.

“Our retail payments scheme is about giving people all over the world the best possible user experience, and making transacting internationally just as simple and efficient as it is to send or receive money domestically. This is a really significant development in the evolution of cross-border payments, and we are delighted that people all over the world are starting to feel the benefits.”

Rubén González
Head of Iberia & Strategic Accounts, Swift

Supporting the G20 roadmap with real account-to-account services

The initiative is closely aligned with the international agenda to improve cross-currency payments. The G20, together with the Financial Stability Board and the Bank for International Settlements, has set clear objectives to make international payments faster, more transparent, more accessible and more efficient. 

For financial institutions, this model enables payments initiated outside the euro payments area to be completed in Spain through instant account-to-account rails. For companies and end customers, it represents a significant improvement in the payment experience: payments that were traditionally subject to cut-off times, intermediary chains and uncertainty over execution can now become faster, more predictable and more transparent.

This opens the door to use cases such as urgent supplier payments, liquidity movements between markets, remittances, digital platforms, insurance payouts and other time-sensitive international payment needs.

The Spanish financial community is already preparing the next phase of market adoption, with lead-ing institutions developing new propositions to bring these capabilities to their customers over the coming months.