Almost five years since it was among 19 banks to begin testing Swift's Trade Services Utility, Deutsche Bank has conducted its first live transactions with a corporate customer using the utility.
Deutsche Bank's first corporate user of the utility is part of a joint financial supply chain pilot it is conducting with Standard Bank.
TSU is a service launched by Swift in 2006 that provides financial institutions with an exchange of trade-related information using common messaging and set industry standards to support open-account trade.
Until now, Deutsche Bank's use of the TSU has purely been for internal testing. This is the case for many of the hundred-plus banks signed up to the Swift utility.
But Jonathan Richman, Deutsche Bank's global product head for trade and financial supply chain, says his team is talking to a number of other corporates interested in participating in the live pilot of the TSU and accessing its open account services integrated with Deutsche Bank's other trade offerings.
"We will continue to selectively add participants and hope by this time next year to have more customers of Deutsche Bank and our partner bank networks on the utility," he says. "We expect to be making some money from it, to prove the value, but it won't yet be a huge revenue stream. But by Sibos next year we'll know if we can take it to the next level or not."