The Italian Banking Association (ABI) has confirmed that the country’s major banks could be ready to start using Blockchain technology to run inter-bank reconciliations by March next year. This is after successful pilot tests.

In addition, the move is part of the Spunta Banca Project, the project promoted by ABI and coordinated by ABI Lab. The project is geared towards the implementation of DLT within Italy’s inter-bank process. The project involves a total of 18 banks. This figure represents 78% of the banking sector in terms of number of employees. It employs technology from NTT Data, SIA and R3’s Corda Network.

As per ABI, the blockchain banking reconciliation system has processed 200 million data entries during the test. This has effectively simulated one year of Italian banking activity.  The successful test has allegedly demonstrated the sustainability of the verification procedure and the platform.

Furthermore, 35 nodes distributed all over Italy fed data into the platform. ABI first revealed its plan to deploy Blockchain technology in mid-June.

Additionally, ABI stated:

“The applied architecture was robust without having to resort to specific technical solutions. The methodology used allowed to analyse the operation for banking groups, and large and small banks. The test also allowed for an initial analysis of the response time process. The test was completely successful.”

Distributed Ledger Tech (DLT) in Banking

Moreover, the new application will verify correspondent accounts matching but involves different banks. Up to now, reconciliation was based on bilateral registers that have low standardization and operating methods. The implementation of DLT for inter-bank reconciliation makes it possible to detect non-matching transactions using a shared algorithm. It gives interested groups the possibility of being able to view the transactions.

In conclusion, the Italian Banking Association hopes to bring Blockchain to banking through Spunta Project. The Italian banking industry is a major player in Blockchain technology.