The Italian Banking Association (ABI) has announced that it is proceeding to the ‘pre-production phase’ for its much anticipated blockchain-based interbank reconciliation project. Since 2018, the banks have been testing the blockchain-powered interbank system as it was continuously reported by Italian media outlet Ansa.
The primary target of the project that is being undertaken by ABI lab is to enhance data visibility and transparency while simultaneously increasing the speed of executing transactions. Also, the project aims at enabling checks and exchanges within the application.
The ‘Spunta Project’ Enters ‘Pre-production Phase’
The ‘Spunta Project’ is entirely coordinated by the ABI Lab which is the renowned banking research and innovation center. The center is operated by ABI in conjunction with technical partners R3’s Corda platform, Sia, and NTT Data. Currently, there are 18 banks participating in this project which represents 78% of the whole Italian banking sector with regards to the number of employees.
All these financial institutions are actively involved in the testing, selection and also implementation of the new technology. The reconciliation process is widely considered as fertile territory for the seamless introduction of a permissioned ledger to the Italian banking system. It is the best territory since the Spunta Project process is based primarily on bilateral registers that have a low level of standardization.
After successfully going through rigorous initial tests, more developmental updates for the Italian project are underway. Some of the major updates include the development of reliable reports for auditors, management of infra-group reconciliations, and the advanced refinement of the matching algorithm.
According to the latest updates from ABI, the next steps will mainly incorporate testing of the platform’s stability to determine its overall performance simulating the production phase for the whole Italian banking industry. To achieve that, a data simulator will generate transaction volumes over the next year.
This simulation will be conducted in a geographically distributed environment and interlinked using a private network. For now, more functional updates are getting implemented in partnership with the pilot banks.
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