Italian banks to test R3 Corda for payments reconciliation

The research and innovation centre of the Italian Bankers Association, ABI Lab, is building a blockchain proof-of-concept to handle straight-through processing of interbank reconciliations over the R3 Corda platform.

For the trial, ABI Lab, in cooperation with NTT Data Italia, will explore the applicability of DLT to issues such as the time taken to identify mismatched transactions between two banks, lack of a standardised process and communication protocol, and limited visibility of transactions between parties.Corda uses DLT to provide a single, immutable record of each transaction, resolving the discrepancies in mismatched data that are often costly and complex to resolve.

Pierfrancesco Gaggi, president of ABI Lab, comments: “The success of this pilot will simplify the resolution of the suspended movements in the correspondent accounts between banks in terms of better efficiency, transparency and speed of this process. Starting from a simple area using DLT can be a good solution to pave the way for future implementations with a stronger knowledge on these tools generated from a sector-level project”.ABI Lab is run by the ABI for over 160 banks and 65 information communication technology companies in Italy.

David Rutter, CEO of R3, comments: “The manual processes and systems used for interbank reconciliation are time-consuming, costly, labour-intensive and error-prone. Working with ABI Lab we are using Corda to automate the matching process, helping Italian banks avoid mismatches and improve efficiency and accuracy across the board. This PoC will demonstrate how easy it is for banks to reduce their operational and back office costs, while saving time and communicating securely by utilising DLT.”