The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the Hong Kong Interbank Clearing Limited (HKICL) and SWIFT have announced that they have completed the migration of Clearing House Automated Transfer System (CHATS) payments to SWIFT with the addition of “InterAct” and “Browse” to the RTGS platform.
These new services are live and provide interactive real-time query and response messaging to RTGS participants. Apart from other channels to access Central Moneymarkets Unit (CMU) services, with InterAct and Browse, the real time CHATS and CMU functions can now be undertaken by the 151 RTGS participants and 163 CMU participants in a more interactive and user-friendly manner.
“Our decision to move from a proprietary platform to SWIFT has been a success for our participating banks because they are able to use one uniform standard to process domestic and international payment messages since phase 1 migration. The complete migration further facilitates the interoperability between domestic and international messages, which are conducive to the further development of the multi-currency and multi-dimensional platform in Hong Kong, thus helping consolidate Hong Kong as an international financial centre,” said Eddie Yue, Deputy Chief Executive, HKMA.
