The Royal Bank of Canada today launched a real-time wire payments tracking feature to instill more transparency around the status of payments. The bank is using SWIFT Global Payments Innovation (gpi) technology to power the feature.

Accessible through the bank’s online business banking channel, RBC Express, the Track Wire Payments feature will be available for business-to-business or business-to-consumer payments domestically and internationally, said Lisa Lansdowne-Higgins, vice president of business deposits and treasury solutions for RBC. She also represents Canada on SWIFT’s global board of directors.

Businesses can now track a wire payment from the moment it leaves RBC to its arrival at a beneficiary’s bank at no additional cost, Lansdowne-Higgins said, adding that the transparency enables businesses to better plan and optimize cash flow. The tool would result in fewer inquiries around tracking details and discrepancies around funds sent versus funds received, she explained.

SWIFT gpi is a payments processing standard featuring end-to-end tracking of payments. More than 3,500 banks, accounting for 85% of SWIFT’s total payments traffic, have committed to adopting gpi and more than $300 billion is sent every day in 148 currencies, according to SWIFT. Nearly 50% of gpi payments are credited to end beneficiaries within 30 minutes and nearly 100% are credited within 24 hours, SWIFT stated.

Lansdowne-Higgins said RBC was an early supporter of SWIFT’s gpi initiative. The bank participated in the international gpi pilot and helped SWIFT work through the complexities of streamlining correspondent banking processes and improving payment transparency and traceability.

“Before, if there were any delays or [issues], businesses had to rely on the beneficiary to tell them that the transaction had settled,” Lansdowne-Higgins said. “Today, with the new capability, they’re able to log into our online platform and track it step by step to make sure that settlement occurs, as well as to know the final dollar amount.”

RBC is Canada’s biggest bank, with 16 million clients in Canada, the U.S. and 34 other countries. Its market cap is $114.1 billion.

Wim Raymaekers, director of SWIFT gpi, previously told Bank Innovation that SWIFT’s competitive advantage is its reach, as 11,000 banks are on its systems. “This is a community of banks,” he said. “We are about innovation at scale, and scale is important because of the consistency of experience.”

One of the major U.S. banks in the SWIFT ecosystem is Wells Fargo. Judd Holroyde, head of global product management for Wells Fargo, said that the cost of traditional wires can be prohibitive for payers, particularly in the case of international payments. He added that the bank is still “very heavily focused” on the SWIFT gpi initiative despite its partnerships with firms like TransferMate in other areas of B2B payments.

“[SWIFT gpi] essentially allows much greater visibility as to the status, location and, ultimately, confirmation of beneficiary receipt in the SWIFT wire form,” Holroyde said. “That’s also a very important part of this ecosystem for us because we’re a tremendous wire volume producer, just because of the size of the enterprise and the breadth of our customer base.”