Reimagining Cross-Border Payments: How SWIFT’s New Platform Changes Everything

6 Treasury and Trade Solutions 7 Reimagining Cross-Border Payments: How SWIFT’s New Platform Changes Everything The importance of collaboration SWIFT’s new platform will go a long way to delivering the frictionless, fast, and transparent experience that the FSB sets out in its Cross-border Payments Roadmap. Importantly, it will do this at scale and aim to deliver a superior experience to end- users across more than 200 countries while maintaining and enhancing the safety and security of the current SWIFT based interbank model. This new model also will naturally accelerate the drive across banks and financial market infrastructures to rethink their operating models and build 24/7 capabilities, fully leveraging SWIFT’s existing 24/7 availability. The platform offers an opportunity for the banking community to advance beyond incremental change and create a futureproof and sustainable model that can continually adapt as technologies and standards evolve. All banks, regardless of size, will able to derive the benefits that this transformation aims to deliver and translate those benefits to their clients. The FSB’s Roadmap highlights the need for collaboration across the industry and the importance of improving existing payment infrastructure. Citi is committed to playing a leading role to both drive and deliver those changes (see Citi’s strategy on the following page). There is an impressive coalition of major banks lined up to execute SWIFT’s new platform strategy: the industry is poised to address the challenges that exist within today’s cross- border-payments and is set to pave the way for a significant transformation of the payments landscape. “No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” H.E. Luccock Citi is committed to driving the industry forward and investing in new capabilities that deliver the speed and benefits of instant payments to clients, across all payment types. Our objective is to help ensure a frictionless, instant and certain cross-border payment experience by combining an industry-based approach with our global network and capabilities. To this end, Citi is part of the pilot group for SWIFT’s new platform and is committed to integrating this new technology into our cross-border payments offering when it launches in November 2022. We see this as a critical piece of the jigsaw in achieving an instant, frictionless cross-border payment experience that can be delivered consistently to our customers. In parallel, we are leveraging the strength of our own network across 96 countries to offer flexible, efficient and fast payment options to our clients. For example, for some time now, we have offered our corporate and financial institution clients access to the largest proprietary cross-border ACH payments network by leveraging our branches around the world and their registration with local ACH clearing systems. This has enabled our clients to unlock the value of domestic, full value payments, when making cross- border payments. We have recently expanded this Cross Border capability to Instant Payments schemes, leveraging our unrivalled domestic connections to Instant Payments schemes around the world, with Citi clients now able to send cross-border instant payments to the UK and Singapore. We have also launched Citi ® Network Instant Payments that enables Citi clients to make cross-border payments, across certain corridors, in real-time, 24/7 to other Citi accounts. We have also integrated our cross border payments capabilities with card schemes and digital wallet ecosystems. All this is providing our clients with an ever growing ability to pay their counterparties, no matter their location or preferred payment type, in near real time. When combining these innovative and digital payment options with API services, the customer experience is further enhanced through access to real-time data, from real-time payment status updates, to live FX rates and the ability to pre-validate payment information before releasing payments to be processed. The combination of these elements will enable us to deliver a cross- border payments experience that is consistently instant, frictionless, certain and near 24/7, helping our clients to unlock greater efficiency and providing the right tools to fuel the growth of digital economies. While we will continue to invest in our own infrastructure and network capabilities, there are natural limitations to what one institution can achieve on its own in the cross-border payments landscape. The ability to provide payments ubiquity to our clients is critical and that is significantly enabled through the reach of the 11,000 institutions across the SWIFT network. Our firm belief is that the industry-wide changes delivered through SWIFT’s platform will be critical in improving the payments chain to the benefit of all and ensuring a consistent and enhanced user experience for our clients. As the largest user of SWIFT and a champion of industry progress, Citi intends to lead the banking community in facilitating this much-improved payments experience: SWIFT’s new platform is a key component of our overall strategy. For the platform to reach its full potential and deliver the transformation required, we need to continue building on the existing coalition of banks that are already undertaking this journey. We have done this once through gpi and will do it again now. The time is right for the banking community to fully embrace this transformation, move beyond incremental change and embrace the opportunities presented by transformation. Mark Mcnulty Managing Director, EMEA Payments and Receivables Head, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi Melissa Tuozzolo Director, Payments Financial Market Infrastructure and Industry Head Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi Marc Connolly Senior Vice President, Clearing and FI Payments Market Management, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi Citi’s strategy: Combining an industry-based approach with our global network Citi plans to leverage SWIFT’s new platform to deliver an instant, certain, transparent and 24/7 cross-border experience.