Payment Pre-validation

Payment Pre-validation is an innovative solution that helps reduce errors and mistakes in payment messages before they’re sent. By pre-validating payments, you can eliminate friction, reduce delays and deliver a seamless payment experience to your customers.

Payment Pre-validation is an API suite accessed through a single product. It includes: 

• Beneficiary account verification: A collaborative service enabling you to verify beneficiary information. 
  • Payment validation: Using reference data and payment rules, this service verifies that payment information meets the quality criteria required by its target jurisdiction. Swift hosts this data centrally. 

There is currently no graphical user interface for this solution. Instead, it’s operated by exchanging API calls. 

Payment Pre-validation is included in Swift Essentials. Only beneficiary bank verification using data provider comes with a premium.

To ensure users can benefit from this solution from the moment they sign up, we’ve developed our Central Beneficiary Account Verification feature. This leverages Swift transaction data to verify account information accuracy as our community continues to grow.

This means the solution doesn’t require universal adoption to be effective but can deliver real value from day one. And as more users sign up and contribute their data, the solution will help deliver a frictionless payments experience.  

Sign up now to ensure you’re ready to reap the benefits. 

Payment Pre-validation can be used independently from the execution of a payment. To use it, you need to be able to exchange API calls – either through a secure internet connection or via our API infrastructure. Connectivity options include our Software Development Kit and Microgateway. Learn more about how you can connect to our API channel. 

To start using Payment Pre-validation, you need to sign up and implement our API specifications. For more information, visit our Developer Portal. 

During the pre-validation process users play the role of API consumers or API providers. 

API consumers can call our pre-validation APIs to ensure that their payment information is correct before a payment is sent. This information is validated by the beneficiary bank if they’re subscribed to Payment Pre-validation, or, if not, by Swift. When an API consumer makes this call, the role of the API provider begins – it’s their job to verify that the information provided is correct by answering those API calls. They can do this by comparing it with existing information they have about this account. 

Both these roles are essential for the service to run smoothly. Requesting data in real time ensures that the information used to check payments is always accurate and up to date. 

The service works across all payment formats, including MT-based messages and ISO 20022. This means that you won’t need to install any updates to account for new message formats once the industry has migrated to ISO 20022.

We’ve taken every precaution to ensure your data is safe. We don’t store confidential information and our secure infrastructure means that only registered users in our community can send API calls with this service. 

Read our privacy policy to find out more 

Yes, Payment Pre-validation operates globally. 

The solution is API format agnostic. 

If you’ve still got questions, download our terms and conditions, or get in touch with your account manager.