单选题 Paggage2 Whether sending or receiving payments across borders, banks often charge too much or take too long-or both. One study last year found that European banks overcharged for over a third of urgent transfers. Thankfully, new payments networks are starting to offer quick, reliable and more competitively priced service. Given time, these could pose a threat to traditional bilateral(or correspondent) agreements between individual banks and to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), the global network that processes most large international payments. One upstart gaining credibility is the Inter-bank On-line System(IBOS), which was founded in 1997 by Britain’s Royal Bank of Scotland and Spain’s Banco Santander. What is the system’s attraction? The answer is that instead of taking many days and bits of paper, the form of correspondent banking, account-account payment in IBOS can be completed opening an expensive international branch network. The system’s executives like to refer to its members-now 11 banks from nine countries-as a single “virtual bank”. Charles Mallis of Chase, which is merging with Chemical, a big American rival, says that this ability to “share” branches was a big attraction to the bank, even though it already has the world’s largest correspondent network. IBOS bills themselves act as more than simply a quick payment service. It wants to develop into a platform for all sorts of cash-management products, particularly for multinationals. Sean Verity, its chief executive, says that there are also plans to license the system’s technology, so that banks anywhere can use it as a platform for their own independent payment associations. And its members think that its advanced technology could help them to speed up commerce-payments using smart cards, electronic cash and so on. IBOS claims that it is not a direct threat to SWIFT because the two are fundamentally different in several ways. For instance, the former is a decentralized cash management technology which links different banks’ branches directly, whereas all traffic for its bigger rival must pass through a central hub in Brussels.