StanC, Citi become shareholders in Swift India

Standard Chartered and Citibank have picked up stake in global financial messaging service Swift's local arm, becoming the first foreign lenders to invest in the platform.

Swift India was formed in 2012 as a joint venture between the global cooperative Swift Scril and nine leading domestic banks.

This is its second round of capital raising, an official statement said.

Details on the stake picked up by the two lenders or the valuations were not shared.

Other lender shareholders in the company include Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Canara Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of India and Union Bank of India.

Both Standard Chartered Bank as well as Citi linked the investment to their respective efforts to promote digitisation.

"Given our long association with SWIFT across markets, Swift India's corporate to bank connectivity was a logical extension of our endeavour to help clients automate and digitise flows, whilst gaining efficiency through standardisation and process automation," Stan Chartered's head of transaction banking Sanjay Gurjar said.

"This association will help enable efficiencies in managing corporate-to-bank digital flows in India on a secure and robust platform," Citi's South Asia head for treasury and trade solutions, Debopama Sen, said.

Swift India's chief executive Kiran Shetty said the investment reinforces the trust and commitment of the Indian financial community in Swift India, to accelerate digitisation of domestic information flows and financial messages.