Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) has become the first Asian bank to adopt 3SKey, the multi-bank digital identity service for corporate treasury authentication developed by financial messaging network Swift.
First introduced in 2011, 3SKey enables multi-bank exchange of personal signatures and strong user access control using a single universal token across multiple online channels.
3SKey has seen good take-up in France because of the replacement of the old corporate-to-bank protocol (Etebac) with either Swift or Ebics. Ebics comes with a 'signing' solution using digital signatures which Swift sought to emulate with 3SKey.
Outside of France, take-up has been slower, although Swift has seen some of its early adopters push the product into new territories, including a roll-out to Latin America.
Just today, Societe Generale has announced plans to make 3SKey available in 90 countries on its international cash management web portal, Sogecash Web.
3Skey, which was originally implemented in 2010 for payments requiring personal signatures sent over SwiftNet, is now used by more than 2,200 customers on Sogecash Web. Looking ahead, Societe Generale anticipates that clients will want to move from proprietary bank portals to a universal, multi-bank, multi-network digital identity solution, and that 3SKey will become the industry standard.
Corporate demand for digital signing is expected to play a big role in bank adoption over time. Last year, Swift reported a sharp rise in the number of corporates in Asia-Pacific joining the network, and this is the fastest growing region in terms of traffic.
Eiichi Kashiwagi, general manager, BTMU, comments: "We selected 3SKey in response to a strong demand from our corporate clients for personal identification on file channels. We are convinced that advanced controls and open international standards will benefit corporates, banks and the industry as a whole."
With BTMU onboard, 3SKey is now offered by 34 banking groups with integration support from 50 application providers.
Swift's strategy of going to straight to the corporate market with 3SKey is exemplified in a deal signed with Nordic cash and treasury management outfit Opus Capita to embed its financial messaging applications - including 3sKey - into the firm's cloud-based Payment Factory service, which is offered as a SaaS service.
Jan Heinsbroek, senior account director at Swift, comments: "With OpusCapita we have a clear example of the new partnership model Swift is looking for. The strong presence of OpusCapita in the corporate market with their cloud-based cash-management platform is a great fit with Swift's global reach into the banks. This, complemented with Swift's 3Skey solution for secure access to OpusCapita's Payment Manager, will offer the corporates the functionality, security and reach they are looking for."