The Italian Banking Association (ABI) is moving into the 'pre-production phase' for its blockchain-based interbank reconciliation project.
The 'Spunta Project' is coordinated by ABI Lab, the banking research and innovation center promoted by the Italian Banking Association (ABI), together with technical partners NTT Data, Sia, and R3's Corda platform. So far, 18 banks, representing 78% of the Italian banking sector in terms of number of employees, are actively involved in the testing, selection and implementation of the technology.
As a process based on bilateral registers with a low level of standardisation, the reconciliation process is viewed as fertile territory for the introduction of a permissioned ledger.
Having passed a number of initial tests, further developmental updates for the Italian project are in the pipeline, including the management of infra-group reconciliations, the creation of reliable reports for auditors, and the further refinement of the matching algorithm.
ABI says the next steps will include technical testing of the platform's stability to verify its overall performance simulating the production phase for the entire Italian banking sector.
To do this, a data simulator will generate transaction volumes over a period of 365 days. The simulation will be carried out in a geographically distributed environment and connected through a private network. In the meantime, additional function updates are being implemented in conjunction with the pilot banks.