More than half of B2B transfers miss the one-day mark: how SEPA and Swift payments speed them up

You send two supplier payments from the same account on the same morning. One lands within hours and arrives almost untouched by fees, while the other takes three days to reach a different country and loses a slice to intermediaries along the way.

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This happens every day in international business, and it's far less random than it looks, because different rails are built for different jobs. That's also why asking whether SEPA payments or Swift payments are better has no sensible answer: each does its own job well.

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This guide explains what each rail does, what it costs in time and money and how to build a payment stack that gives every market the right route.

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One rail can't carry all your B2B cross-border payments

Most finance teams spot the problem the same way: suppliers start asking where the money is. And the symptoms look much the same in every industry.

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1. Nobody can promise an arrival date. How long do international payments take? Ask a bank and you'll hear "it depends": on the currencies, the number of banks involved and the time zones. According to the Financial Stability Board's 2025 progress report, fewer than 45% of business-to-business payments settle within one business day. So even a narrower question, how long does a Swift transfer take, gets a range rather than a number.
2. Every bank in the chain takes a fee, and the rules change at the border. When two banks have no direct link, the payment goes through a correspondent bank, which holds accounts for other banks and moves money on their behalf. Each of these banks can take its own cut, so the recipient may get less than you sent, and these bank transfer fees rarely show up as one clear line. Inside the EU and EEA, euro cross-border payments can't cost more than domestic ones, but outside that zone prices vary widely. A 2026 World Bank study of the Western Balkans shows the gap: where SEPA went live, the average cost of a €5,000 transfer fell from about 0.76% in 2024 to 0.08% in 2025. On routes still outside SEPA, costs stayed at 0.44–0.45% and varied widely.
3. Payments scatter and matching goes manual. When each market runs through a different bank, B2B cross-border payments arrive with different references, formats and timing. The more markets you serve, the more hours go into matching them to invoices.

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All three problems have one cause: the business asks a single rail to do the work of several.

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Get the multi-rail payment solution →

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Meet the rails: SEPA payments, Swift payments and local networks

Before you build anything, it helps to know what each rail was made for.

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SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area): euro transfers at domestic speed

SEPA stands for Single Euro Payments Area. It's a zone where euro transfers between member countries follow one shared set of rules, so paying a supplier in another member country works much like paying one across town. The zone is bigger than the EU: the European Payments Council lists 41 countries and territories, including the UK, Switzerland and Norway.

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So what are SEPA transfers in practice? Mostly credit transfers between IBAN accounts, where an IBAN (International Bank Account Number) is the standard account number used across the zone. Under EU payment rules, a standard SEPA transfer must reach the recipient's provider by the end of the next working day.

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The zone also runs SEPA instant payments, known as SCT Inst. Under the EU Instant Payments Regulation, the money must reach the payee within ten seconds, at any hour, on any day of the year. In practice it's often faster: the Eurosystem's TIPS platform settles 99.99% of its payments in under five seconds. Instant transfers already make up a quarter of all credit transfers handled by euro area retail payment systems.

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The same regulation also removed the extra fee. Since January 2025, euro area providers can't charge more for an instant payment than for a standard transfer, and settling one through TIPS costs the providers themselves just €0.002.

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The limit is in the name: euros only, inside the zone only. One detail matters for British businesses: SEPA payments UK companies send and receive still follow scheme rules, because the EPC kept the UK in SEPA from 1 February 2020, after Brexit. However, SEPA membership for the United Kingdom doesn't bring EU law with it, so rules such as equal charges for euro transfers don't apply outside the EU and EEA.

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Swift: worldwide reach at a price

Swift stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, and the name is misleading: Swift moves messages, not money. Banks use its network to send each other payment instructions, while the money itself moves through accounts that banks hold with one another. That's why a Swift transfer can pass through several banks before it arrives, and why its cost and timing depend on the route.

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To address a payment, Swift uses a BIC, or Business Identifier Code. It's 8 or 11 characters long and points to a specific bank and, if needed, its branch. People searching for a bank Swift number or a Swift address are looking for this code.

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Speed on the network has improved considerably: Swift reports that 90% of cross-border payments reach the recipient's bank within an hour. The full journey takes longer, though: only 43% reach the end customer's account within an hour, while the G20 target is 75% by 2027. According to Swift, most of the delay happens in the final domestic leg, where batch processing, limited operating hours, compliance checks and currency controls hold the money up.

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Real-time payments and local instant networks

Many countries also run their own fast domestic systems. An instant payment, also called a real-time payment, lets the recipient use the money within seconds, at any time of day or night.

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In the US, the Federal Reserve launched FedNow in 2023 so that banks can move money for their customers instantly, on any day of the year. In the UK, Faster Payments funds are usually available almost immediately.

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Each such payment network works only inside its own country. Still, if your provider is connected to it, paying into that market this way can be cheaper and faster than an international transfer. These systems are also raising the bar, as partners now expect every transfer to be quick, domestic or not.

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The account layer: multi-currency accounts and virtual IBANs

Rails are only half the story, because a business also needs account details that can receive money on them. A multi-currency account lets you hold, send and receive several currencies in one place instead of opening one account per currency.

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A virtual IBAN goes a step further. It's a unique account number that feeds into one master account, so you can give different virtual IBANs to different customers or markets and still collect everything in one place. That's what makes multi-currency payments practical without opening a bank account in every country you sell to.

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Get your dedicated named IBAN→

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Putting the stack together for global business payments

Now the pieces come together into a working setup, and the logic is simple: market first, rail second.

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Match each market to its rail

For most international business payments, the mapping is simpler than it looks. Euros inside the zone go by SEPA, or by SEPA Instant when timing matters, and other currencies and destinations go by Swift. Markets with fast local systems get the local rail, as long as your provider can reach it.

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Good B2B payment solutions are built on exactly this mapping. It matters most in B2B payments, where invoice-sized amounts make every extra fee visible, and the same logic works whether you pay a few European suppliers or a supplier base across several continents.

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Judge every payment on speed, cost and reach

Ask three questions about each international business payment:

1. How fast does it need to arrive?
2. What will the route cost, including intermediary fees?
3. Can the route reach the recipient's account at all?

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A provider or cross-border payment gateway that sees all these rails can answer these questions for each payment, not just for each country. That way an urgent supplier payment and a routine one don't have to travel the same way.

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One place to send, one view to match

The last piece is day-to-day work. When every rail is available from one account, payment reconciliation (matching each incoming and outgoing payment to the right invoice and balance) stops being a spreadsheet job. References stay consistent, balances sit in one view and month-end closing takes less time. Building this stack on your own means a separate banking relationship in every market, which is why many businesses use a single provider instead.

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COLIBRIX ONE works at exactly this level. You get a multi-currency business account with a dedicated IBAN in your company's name, plus SEPA and SEPA Instant for euro transfers and Swift for the rest of the world, all managed in one place. Each payment takes the most efficient route available, with as few intermediaries as possible, and you see FX costs before the money moves.

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Open your multi-currency account →

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If you're comparing options for the best business bank account for international payments, the length of the currency list is rarely what decides it. What matters is whether one account covers every market you work with, and whether real people are there to help when a payment needs attention.

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International payments stop feeling like a lottery once you stop asking one rail to do every job. Match each market to the route built for it and keep every transfer visible in one place, and you'll hear "where's my money?" from suppliers far less often.