India's state-owned natural gas utility, GAIL, supported by Swift India, says it has adopted a solution that will enable it to digitise letter of credit (L/C) and bank guarantee transactions.

Swift India is a joint venture between 11 banks in India and Belgium-based global messaging service provider, Swift.

Seamless processing

India's largest gas distributor says the solution will eliminate manual processing and enable

secure, transparent, and seamless transactions.

"The entire end-to-end process of digitisation of bank guarantee and standby L/Cs, from issuance till invocation, will be a seamless process without any manual intervention," according to GAIL's finance director, Shri Jain.

Going live

GAIL has initially gone live with Axis Bank by digitising bank guarantees, making the gas utility the first Indian corporate to go live with Swift India's e-BG solution that will reduce the turnaround time for implementing bank guarantees.

By choosing to activate eBG through Swift India's platform, GAIL will now have ISO-based messaging standards for issuance, amendment and invocation of e-BGs in a seamless and secure way.

This article represents the views of the author and not necessarily those of the ICC or Coastline Solutions.