Swift says it has managed to complete an international payment in just 13 seconds, in what it claimed was a “major advance” for cross-border transactions.

The service is some way away from being rolled out to Swift customers, but Harry Newman, head of banking at Swift, said the organisation would be working with the market infrastructures involved in the trials on “how to progress to live operation”.

Sending money to another country is typically slow and costly. Current methods can take