A report from the SWIFT financial messaging provider and 34 global transaction banks seeking to answer the question how to) (Blockchain) Proof of Concept (PoC) can help account reconciliation nostro was released today, March 8, with positive results.

A Nostro account is the account of a bank in a foreign currency in another bank. In April 2017, SWIFT had first announced that it was going to use the Hyperledger platform to update its cross-border payment practices, in collaboration with BNP Paribas, BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon and D & # 39; other.

The SWIFT test project added another 22 additional banks in July 2017, including Commerzbank, Societe Generale and JPMorgan Chase Bank.

SWIFT press release regarding the Bank to Bank Project Report notes that the PoC intended to understand how a combination of DLT and SWIFT assets could meet "Industry-level governance, data security and privacy", and showing the benefits of using it over other applications.

The 34 participating banks each had their own node deployed in a SWIFT DLT sandbox, whose underlying technology was Hyperledger Fabric v1.0

The PoC results showed that DLT could provide "Real-time event management, transaction status updates, complete audit trails, visibility of expected and available balances, confirmation of simplified real-time account entries, identification of pending entries, and potential problems

Damien Vanderveken, Head of Research and Development at SWIFT, said in the press release:

"The PoC is very well done, proving the fantastic progress made with DLT and the Hyperledger fabric in particular. "

The press release also noted that DLT has made progress with respect to privacy and data security, governance, and identification frameworks, proving that this new technology can take in charge "multi-bank financial applications."

Stephen Gilderdale, Chief Platform Officer of SWIFT ER, stated that it is a "strategic priority" ] for SWIFT to look at DLT:

"We are already working on new PoCs and will continue our R & D efforts to ensure that SWIFT customers can take advantage of their infrastructure and existing SWIFT connectivity to benefit from blockchain services, whether offered by SWIFT or by third parties, on a secure and reliable platform.

noted that prerequisites, such as account servers migrating to real-time reporting and liquidity processing, should be fulfilled before the financial sector can adopt DLT on a large scale.

DLT technology will also require more development, ready to support a large global infrastructure The press release gives the example that 10,000 channels would be needed to cover all of Nostro's current relationships, while the study only used 528.

As for the next steps, the SWIFT report indicates that it will encourage its community to start using the reporting and liquidity treatment in real time, as well as developing their platform for "to complete it with DLT capabilities."