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We don’t have much to add to a crisp and clear message. This is much truer in the wholesale banking space, in which “digital” means “straight-through processing,” i.e., seamless machine-to-machine interaction that goes beyond fancy front-ends to entice consumer experience, which the article tags as “digital lipstick.”

SWIFT’s API-based pre-validation service

The pre-validation scheme is fully integrated with SWIFT gpi (global payments initiative) payments and will enable a bank to send and receive application programming interface (API) calls over the SWIFT network to check beneficiary account information with the ultimate receiving bank.

So what?

The relevant part of this news is the use of APIs as real-time bank-to-bank connectivity channels. Additional features to existing solutions will not be any more “patched” (i.e., hard-coded) to the solution but will come as external modules, reusable also for purposes that may arise in the future.

The use of APIs as enablers of added-value services for bank-to-bank interactions is an established practice for wholesale banks. Testament of this assertion is SWIFT’s declared plan to develop another API to run a post-payment investigation and reconciliation service that will allow for fast resolution of delaying factors typically arising from compliance or regulatory requirements.

Just to give more substance to my article, here are a few examples of real-life initiatives that validate the conepts expressed.

Currenxie: Hong Kong-based cross-border payments provider offering customers inventory and logistics financing based on their Amazon trading history.

Previse: U.K. software company that uses multiple supply chain transaction data points to create an independent score of the probability of an invoice ultimately being settled.

Standard Chartered Bank: The bank connects its clients with their buyers and suppliers by integrating financial, informational, and physical flows, including financing the supply chain as well as operating cash, receivables reconciliation, risk management, and FX.

Nice article but I suspect it breaches Finextra's rules that you should avoid any form of self-advertisement. Too much about BBVA here and there.

Strange that Finextra's editors have not intervened.

Kudos to what the bank is doing, and in some sense it provides clear examples and use cases. However it could have been written with less BBVA-centric verbage.

Want to read my 2013 post https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/7274/wall-street-systems-acquires-it2-beware-the-ion-black-hole  

Skills management has become the number 1 priority for bank CIOs- and not only.

Banks must right now decide whether they want to have up-to-date skilled staff, or rely on outsourced resources to cover the gaps.

Running hackatons seems to be the solution today, but in the long-run this may deplete the bank’s internal skills as all the IP stays with the fintechs. Likewise, fintech hackaton participants must be wary whether their bank host is trying to “steal” ideas.

I welcome SWIFT’s strategy to become a global network and provide customers with a single gateway to connect to multiple instant payments systems.

SWIFT can become a reference for any other instant payments gateway and set the necessary standards to ensure seamless interoperability between platforms.

This article does not add anything new to the behavior banks are adopting in analyzing DLT solutions. Banking consortia like R3 and Swift have made clear their concerns about the readiness of blockchain-based applications to serve the needs of interbank transactions.

I very much welcome the attention dedicated to analyzing the shortcomings of the technology and look forward to deeper analysis and involvement of all parties in the value chain, corporations included.

I have  have always anticipated that blockchain-based solutions will gain global uptake once corporate interests are taken into account. This initiative seems to go in that direction and it is very welcome.

What I find interesting of this announcement is the notion of an API created to connect the bank's back-office systems with the blockchain rails.

Unitl now banks were involved in creating their own blockchains and be the principal nodes of proprietary DLT networks. Cisti's approach seems to say: whichever blockchain you want to run on, you will still get my services through an API. That is, bank services on a blockchain.