SWIFT gpi is the tracking and transparency service layered over correspondent banking payments, operated by SWIFT for participating banks. Before it, a payment handed into a correspondent chain largely disappeared until it arrived or bounced. Under gpi each payment carries a unique end-to-end reference that travels with it, and participating banks report status back, so the sending bank can say where a payment sits, what has been deducted along the way and when funds were credited. For a treasurer or a supplier chasing an invoice the practical value is precisely that: a reference you can quote and a status you can demand, in place of an assurance that the money has gone.
Why nothing is quoted here. This lexicon quotes only text it has actually read, from the body that issued it. The instrument described above has a real owner, named in the paragraph, but that owner does not publish the operative wording openly, and reproductions circulating on brokers’, carriers’ and consultants’ websites are not the issuing body’s publication and are not treated as the source. So this entry describes the instrument’s role and structure and stops there. For the wording that will actually govern your transaction, go to the issuing body — and read the version your contract incorporates, since these texts are revised.