Societe Generale SA (EPA:GLE) announced today it will use SWIFT to send its domestic payments messages to STET, the European automated clearing house (ACH) that has almost 52% market share of the euro transactions processed in clearing systems and the largest market share of all European currency transactions.
Pascal Augé, Head of Global Transaction & Payment Services at Société Générale, says, “There are clear benefits for us in using SWIFT to send payment messages to STET. Re-use of our SWIFT infrastructure to process domestic as well as international payments will help to streamline our infrastructure, reduce total cost of ownership and offers economies of scale. Additionally, it builds a good foundation for future products and services for our customers such as real time payments.”
This latest partnership underpins the cost, efficiency and security benefits that can be achieved within domestic markets using SWIFT.
Alain Raes, Chief Executive of EMEA & APAC, SWIFT says, “This shows the importance of domestic payments to SWIFT’s strategy. Societe Generale choosing to migrate its traffic to FileAct to exchange its domestic payments with STET is another major step forward in our strategy to support domestic payment markets. Partnerships such as this – along with initiatives like Go Local India and the New Payments Platform that we are currently developing in Australia – will continue to strengthen our position in the domestic payments market and help us to better support our community.”
STET was launched by six major French banks in 2004 in response to the development of the Single European Payment Area (SEPA) and the challenge that SEPA harmonization was going to represent to the European payments industry. It is now used by the French and Belgian financial communities for both SEPA and non-SEPA transactions and in 2014 processed more than 15 billion transactions.
Jean-Marie Vallée, CEO of STET, says: “The payments environment in Europe is evolving rapidly and innovative approaches are required in order for the financial services community to be able to serve their customers. The combination of a cost-effective ACH like STET and the secure and reliable messaging of SWIFT is a strong partnership that can unlock more strategic opportunities for market participants in Europe and particularly in France. We are delighted to Société Générale as the first bank to migrate to SWIFTNet for STET.”
To see the official release, click here.