Italy launches blockchain pilot for interbank reconciliation

ABI Lab, a technological laboratory supported by the Italian Banking Association (ABI), has opened its blockchain-based interbank reconciliation pilot project to 14 lenders.

The pilot aims to give participants greater data transparency and visibility, increased speed in executing transactions, and the possibility of performing checks and exchanges directly within the application.

Executed in collaboration with R3, Ntt Data and Sia, the project focuses on interbank reconciliation, which verifies the matching of correspondent accounts between banks.

ABI Lab claims distributed ledger technology can solve issues around the time needed to identify transactions between banks that do not match; the lack of a standard process and single communications protocol; and the limited visibility of transactions between parties.

By using DLT and implementing a smart contract, it will be possible to provide automatic feedback on bank transactions, thus simplifying and accelerating the reconciliation process, ABI Lab says.

The first 14 institutions involved in the pilot are: Banca Mediolanum; Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena; Banca Sella; BNL BNP Paribas Group; Banca Popolare di Sondrio; Banco BPM; CheBanca! – Mediobanca Group; Credito Emiliano; Crédit Agricole; Credito Valtellinese; Iccrea Banca; Intesa Sanpaolo; Nexi Banca; and Ubi.