Swift gpi
Swift's rulebook for trackable cross-border payments, in which each payment carries a unique ID that every bank along the way has to report against.
A cross-border payment often hops through several correspondent banks, and for decades it went dark in transit. The sender knew the money had left. The recipient knew it hadn't arrived. Neither knew where it was or how much had been skimmed off in fees along the way. Swift launched gpi (global payments innovation) in 2017, not least because fintechs had started eating the market for exactly that problem.
The core is the UETR, a UUID that follows the payment end to end and has been mandatory in every payment message on the network since November 2018. Each bank reports its leg to a central tracker: when the funds arrived, when they went on and what was deducted. Swift says roughly half of gpi payments reach the beneficiary within 30 minutes. The rest are usually waiting for some bank to open in the morning.