The MyStandards concept is a Web-based platform for managing Swift messaging standards by allowing users to store and discuss message specifications for business-to-business communications. The idea originated from Swift's Standards group and was unveiled at Swift's annual user group as part of an innovation workshop.

The pilot began in May 2011 and was limited to eight users incorporating banks, exchanges and payments authorities. Swift is now looking to extend this pilot out to the public in a bid to recruit more members and gain critical mass.

"It is about giving this capability to everyone in the financial services community," said Marc Delbaere, head of Strategy and Architecture, Standards at Swift. "The more people that use it, the better it will be so we are looking for mass adoption. We also need to get as much standards information onto the platform as possible so it will be attractive to users from the outset."

Since its launch in 2010, the MyStandards project has been operating within Swift's Innovation Incubation unit which has provided funding and IT staff. Other projects within this unit include eBAM, a central utility hub for bank Account management which has also completed a pilot scheme this week, and the Digital Access Grid (DAG).

The DAG initiative - which envisions Swift providing the core infrastructure for the exchange of digital asset data - has been a harder sell says Peter Vander Auwera of the swift innovation team.

"We got quite some interest, but is it clear that we'll have to do quite some internal selling and convincing to make all the benefits of such solution clear," he says. "Somebody very senior from a bank suggested that the best thing to do now is probably to build a prototype to make this game-changer more tangible and understandable."