SWIFT takes NPP sign-up in its stride

The initial build and development phases of the New Payments Platform will not be labour-intensive, according to senior executives of the successful vendor, SWIFT.

"We're going to grow, inevitably. At the moment we have six people working for SWIFT in Australia. It's likely that number will double, maybe more," said Alain Raes, SWIFT's chief executive for EMEA and the Asia Pacific.

"The project is about making the linkages as seamless as possible, so from a technological point of view it won't require a massive number of people," Raes said.

"Significantly, we need to have the right kind of people managing the platform once it's up and running," he said.

Raes suggested that, by the time the NPP system goes live, there would be an additional ten people recruited, "rather than hundreds as some people might expect."

SWIFT may bring in a few offshore experts needed "at the very early stage", after which it will be run by locally recruited experts. The new recruits will typically be product managers, support specialists and engineers.