Today the Italian banking association or Associazione Bancaria Italiana (ABI) announced that its blockchain platform for reconciling interbank accounts, Spunta, now has almost 100 banks in production.
After first piloting the platform two years ago with 18 banks, the solution went into production six months ago with 32 banks. There have been two waves of new deployments, with the latest set of 42 banks going live this month, bringing the total to 97.
Previously banks reconciled accounts with each other on a monthly basis. Now it’s done every night, with 97.6% of transactions automatically matching. Communication about differences is integrated within the platform.
NTT Data is the implementation partner working with ABI Lab, using R3’s Corda distributed ledger technology (DLT) and SIA’s network infrastructure.
As previously noted, the ABI says this positive blockchain experience means that Italian banks are keen to participate in central bank digital currency trials.
Given the participation by subsidiaries of European banks, the ABI noted interest from other countries, so it’s exploring extending the application internationally.
Spunta isn’t the only blockchain network that’s attracted broad interest from the Italian banking sector. There’s another project associated with the Bank of Italy aimed at fighting fake guarantees, a major problem in Italy. The initiative has attracted 30 banks and also uses R3’s Corda enterprise blockchain.
