SWIFT, global provider of secure financial messaging services, announced that 22 additional banks have joined its blockchain proof-of-concept (POC). The banks will collaborate to validate whether blockchain can help banks reconcile their international nostro accounts in real time.

According to the official release, the banks include ABN AMRO Bank, ABSA Bank, BBVA, Banco Santander, JPMorgan Chase Bank, Rabobank, Société Générale, Standard Chartered Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, among others. The blockchain POC is among the SWIFT gpi service, which is the new standard for cross-border payments.

“Collaboration is the cornerstone of innovation. This new group of banks allows us to greatly extend the scope of multi-lateral testing of the blockchain application and thus add considerable weight to the findings. We warmly welcome the new banks and look forward to their insights,” Wim Raymaekers, Head of Banking Markets and SWIFT gpi at SWIFT, stated.

The banks will work on testing and validating the PoC’s blockchain application that is presently under development by SWIFT and a group of six founding banks. These founding banks launched the POC earlier this year. Later in April, leading global banks including Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, DBS Bank, RBC Royal Bank and Wells Fargo joined the blockchain POC in order to identify the challenges, define the specifications, build the application and thus test the concept.

These newly added 22 institutions will act as a validation group to test the blockchain application further as well as evaluate the scales and performance of the technology. The POC will recognize the necessity for banks to get real-time liquidity data, so that banks can manage funds throughout the business day. The POC is a private permissioned blockchain in a closed user group environment, with specific user profiles and strong data controls.

“The potential business benefits ensuing from the PoC are clear. If banks could manage their nostro account liquidity in real time, it would allow them to accurately gauge how much money is required in each account at any given point, ultimately enabling them to free up significant funds for other investments,” Damien Vanderveken, Head of R&D, SWIFTLab and UX at SWIFT.

SWIFT also announced that it is leveraging the recently released Hyperledger[i] Fabric v1.0 technology, and combining it with key SWIFT assets, in a move to make sure that all the information related to nostro/vostro accounts is kept private in a secure way.

The company said that the POC blockchain will undergo testing over the summer months with its result likely to be published in September.