This is the progress made so far by Spunta Project, a blockchain-based application for interbank reconciliations. This means that a simulation plan has been launched geared to testing its overall behaviour by simulating the production of transaction volumes throughout the whole banking world in Italy. The test, therefore, covers blockchain operations associated with reconciliations from North to South. To this end, a data simulator has been set up that will generate transaction volumes over a period of 365 days. The data uploading and reconciliation test will be performed over a wide area that is connected through a private network.

Spunta Project, a program coordinated by ABI Lab, the banking research and innovation center promoted by the Italian Banking Association (ABI), aims to implement a blockchain, or rather a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), into interbank processes. The objective is to provide greater data transparency and visibility, faster execution and the possibility of performing checks and exchanges directly within the application. The project includes NTT Data and Sia as technical partners, as well as R3's Corda platform. The existence of various entities, with a range of territorial origins, provides a rich mix of experiences.

The tests so far
Sixty days’ worth of real data were successfully uploaded in the autumn amounting to 1.2 million transactions relating to 14 banks and 14 infrastructure nodes. Following the inclusion in the project of other banks, 2 million transactions were uploaded with good performance, achieving 3.28s for queries of all movements in a node.

Interbank reconciliation
The scope of this project is interbank reconciliation, which verifies the correspondence of the activities of two different banks, e.g. transactions between two clients of two banks.
Reconciliation is an interbank process based on bilateral registers, has a low impact on the overall business, a low level of standardisation, and lacks advanced operating processes. The Italian Banking Association is the body that defines the operating procedures to be applied in the reconciliation process. The mutual accounts regulation is based on an interbank agreement created in 1978, revised in 1987 and further amended in the 90’s.
The process involves the reconciliation of flows and transactions that generate entries in mutual accounts in Italy and the management of pending transactions. The activities relate to interbank dialogue.

Blockchain - Distributed Ledger Technology
With the blockchain, data is not stored on a single computer but is distributed over several nodes, i.e. on several machines that are interconnected. In this way, a vast database can be distributed, and transaction management is shared between several nodes on a network. Without having to rely on a single centralised entity, this new concept of distributed databases, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), changes the way we think and design the relationships and the exchange of value between the participants.

All areas of application
Moreover, the last ABI Lab 2019 Report also focused on the areas of application of blockchain technology and DLT in the banking world. The largest concentration of blockchain projects is on intrabank and interbank transfers, with reports from 42% of banks providing responses. The concentration in this field and the steps forward in the pilot phase are associated with Spunta Project. Some banks are working on the application of blockchain and DLT to notarisation services (27%), with the inclusion in the process of a document so as to certify its existence, and to Trade finance (23%), regarding support for payments to businesses. The other fields of application include customer identification, specified use loans and other areas. As regards notarisation services and specified use loans, it is interesting to note the attention paid to the subject by smaller-sized banks, which is greater than large-sized institutions.