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Ripple Report says Blockchain is reaching critical mass in global payments

| 15-11-2018 | Carlo de Meijer | treasuryXL

Recently Ripple launched its “Blockchain in Payments Report 2018”. Main finding of this Report was that global payments based on this technology is reaching critical mass this year. And on top of that organisations are already ‘looking to incorporate digital assets into payments flows’. I was wondering where these findings were based on, so this blog. But what is even more important, did they also tell the whole storey: i.e. what about the various challenges?

Blockchain and cross border payments

The Ripple report showed, a fast majority of respondents acknowledged that improvements in cross border payments can be made, especially in regards to the pre-funding system and real-time gross settlement (RTGS), and that may help expand business scope and sale.

According to Ripple, the consequence of this is, if they want RTGS for global payments ‘without any incremental costs’, the only way to achieve that is by using blockchain and digital assets to source liquidity.

Blockchain’s potential

Respondents did not only acknowledge that blockchain could bring improvements to cross border payments, they also attribute benefits such as speed and greater geographic access to this blockchain technology. Of these benefits speed ranked first (42%), followed by greater geographic access (40%), cost reduction (38%) and, improved transparency (36%).

Respondents in the financial and broker area show the strongest recognition of blockchain’s potential: 60% were very interested; followed by FinTech (47%); and, banking (46%). Based on the services provided remittance providers showed the strongest recognition of blockchain’s advantages (49%).

Nearing blockchain momentum

The findings in the Ripple Report clearly showed that blockchain is ‘moving from experiments to production’ in 2018. And acceptance of blockchain technology will accelerate in the coming five years.

There are various indicators for that. The activity of the so-called Early Majority, including innovators, early adopters and those that are running blockchain pilots or PoCs (totalling 45% of all respondents) are convincing signals that ‘we are nearing the tipping point for mass adoption of blockchain’, says the Report.

Another interesting finding is that while first movers (mostly large companies), thus those that already have started deploying blockchain technology in production as a way to survive in their markets, ‘ stand to lose most in the face of’ the smaller, more agile mid-market organisations that make of the largest part of Early Majority and Late Majority groups.

Read the full article of our expert Carlo de Meijer on LinkedIn

Carlo de Meijer

Economist and researcher

Grensoverschrijdend betalingsverkeer is (eindelijk!) aan het verbeteren

| 20-03-2018 | Bas Kolenburg |

In mijn vroegere rol als Corporate Treasurer waren grensoverschrijdende betalingen, zowel binnenkomend van een klant of uitgaand naar een leverancier, een regelmatige bron van ergernis:

Het is een langzaam en weinig voorspelbaar proces dat meerdere dagen in beslag kan nemen en over vele schijven verloopt met correspondentbanken etc. ;
Het is een erg duur proces;
Je kan maar moeilijk interveniëren als het proces eenmaal is opgestart;
Het proces is weinig transparant wat betreft doorlooptijd en er is geen bevestiging dat het bedrag op de juiste bestemming is aangekomen.

De afgelopen jaren zijn er in het internationale betalingsverkeer veel vernieuwingen geweest. Deze veranderingen hadden echter vooral betrekking op het SEPA-gebied. Met de introductie van SEPA is het onderscheid tussen een betaling binnen Nederland of binnen het SEPA gebied, mits in Euro, vrijwel verdwenen. Bovendien is valuteren niet meer aan de orde en dienen banken betalingen snel op de rekening van de begunstigde bij te schrijven. Maar als we kijken naar betalingen in andere muntsoorten dan de Euro of betalingen buiten het SEPA gebied dan zijn de verschillen erg groot. Daar tariferen en valuteren banken de transacties nog wel degelijk.

Daarom is er vanuit SWIFT een initiatief gestart dat moet zorgen voor een inhaalslag om ook grensoverschrijdend betalingsverkeer naar een hoger level te brengen: het Global Payments Initiative (SWIFT GPI).

SWIFT GPI streeft ernaar (uiteindelijk) alle hiervoor genoemde ergernissen in het betalingsverkeer op te heffen/te verminderen, om te beginnen met de volgende kenmerken in fase 1 (dat inmiddels sinds januari 2017 live is):

1. Snellere – same day- verwerking van de betaling.
Waarbij dus geen valutering meer wordt toegepast.
2. Transparantie van kosten.
Dus duidelijkheid over alle ingehouden kosten door banken in het gehele proces
3. Transparantie van het proces via tracking en tracing.
Door het toevoegen van uniek E2E (end-to-end) tracking nummer aan de betaling is er de mogelijkheid om een betaling van begin tot eind te volgen en te zien waar de betaling zich bevindt. Een betaler krijgt ook een bevestiging wanneer het geld op de rekening van de begunstigde is bijgeschreven. Hierbij blijft de omschrijving die de klant de betaler aan zijn opdracht meegeeft intact, dus zijn er geen aanpassingen van de tekst in de keten.

De voordelen van dit initiatief voor de Corporate Treasurers zijn talrijk:

• Minder settlement tijd van de inkomende en uitgaande betalingen;
• Betere en meer betrouwbare cash flow management;
• Meer inzicht in de kosten die worden gerekend voor grensoverschrijdende betalingen;
• Minder FX risico;
• Zekerheid voor betalers en ontvangers.

Op dit moment zijn al circa 150 banken wereldwijd aangehaakt bij dit initiatief en de verwachting is dat de meeste banken vanwege de klantbehoefte, zich snel willen gaan aansluiten. Daarbij geldt wel dat banken zelf aan kunnen geven in welke muntsoorten ze deze dienstverlening gaan ondersteunen.

In fase 2 (die is gepland voor 2018), zal SWIFT GPI nog meer functionaliteiten toevoegen:
1. De mogelijkheid om een betaling direct te stoppen
En dat ongeacht waar in het proces de betaling zich bevindt, bijvoorbeeld in geval van fraude of een dubbele betaling.
2. Het bijvoegen van documenten met betalingen
Documenten zoals bijvoorbeeld facturen en compliance documenten kunnen dan worden bijgevoegd en hoeven dan niet meer (zoals nu) via e-mail en andere handmatige acties naar elkaar te worden doorgestuurd.
3. Het invoeren van een “payment assistant”

Hiermee moeten bedrijven geholpen worden om alle gegevens die nodig zijn voor een grensoverschrijdende betaling nog beter aan te leveren zodat een transactie snel en efficiënt door de keten gaat. Bij Nederlandse banken zit in de huidige applicaties overigens al veel features die afdwingen dat klanten de opdrachten zo volledig mogelijk aanleveren.

In een volgende fase wil SWIFT GPI ook nieuwe technologieën, zoals Blockchain, verkennen waarbij uiteindelijk het doel is om de kosten voor de grensoverschrijdende betalingen verdergaand te reduceren.

Al met al is dit een erg positief initiatief van SWIFT om het grensoverschrijdend betalingsverkeer (eindelijk) naar de 21e eeuw te brengen. Nu is het zaak ervoor te zorgen dat zo veel als mogelijk banken zich hierbij aansluiten want als de bank van je tegenpartij niet aan dit initiatief meedoet blijven grensoverschrijdende betalingen een bron van ergernis.

Bas Kolenburg

Senior Consultant at Enigma Consulting

Looking back after 10 years of SEPA

| 26-02-2018 | Paul Stheeman |

Last month we saw the anniversary of several historical moments. 1000 years ago, in January 1018 the Peace of Bautzen ended the German-Polish War. More recently, in January 1998, American President Bill Clinton surprised the world by denying in a press conference that he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. More importantly for Treasurers and the citizens of Europe January 2018 marks the tenth anniversary of the establishment of SEPA, the Single European Payments Area.

In Europe we have become used to SEPA. Initially we all groaned at the idea of having 22-digit long bank accounts numbers called the IBAN, nicknamed as “IBAN the Terrible”. But the introduction of SEPA in January 2008 has brought a number of benefits to over 520 million citizens in Europe. Not only are the 19 Eurozone countries members of SEPA. All other EU countries participate as well as countries such as Norway or Switzerland.

The main benefit is that we now have one payment zone. Previously, making a transfer from Italy to the Netherlands was a cross-border payment. This meant that a whole week could pass between the time when the payer initiated the transfer in Italy and the recipient actually received the funds on his Dutch bank account. In addition, banks in both countries would charge considerable fees for making the transfer. Payment is now done within 24 hours and banks should not charge more than for a domestic payment.

SEPA not only covers transfers. Direct debits and debit cards also are handled in a similar manner through SEPA. And a new instant payment scheme is currently being rolled out, allowing payments to be completed within seconds on a 24/7/365 basis.

SEPA is also strongly regulated. The European Commission established the legal foundation through the Payment Services Directive or PSD. Payment products are overseen as are technical standards.

In the last ten years SEPA has established itself as being the platform for payments in Europe. Due to its wide acceptance and success in its first decade it is likely to accompany us for many years ahead as new payment methods are developed in the digitalised world.

Paul Stheeman

Owner of STS – Stheeman Treasury Solutions GmbH

SWIFT Blockchain POC: Enhanced cross-border payments

| 8-8-2017 | Carlo de Meijer |

Early July SWIFT announced that 22 global banks recently joined its Blockchain proof of concept (PoC) initiative introduced in January this year in collaboration with six leading correspondent banks (ANZ, BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, RBC Royal Bank and Wells Fargo). The PoC is part of SWIFT’s ‘gpi’ (global payments innovation) service, the new standard for cross-border payments, aimed to “re-arm the correspondent banking system for a new age of technological disruption”.

This Blockchain PoC initiative is designed to explore whether blockchain technology can help banks to improve the reconciliation of their international nostro accounts in real-time, optimising their global liquidity. If so, that would be a break through event for both SWIFT and blockchain.

Present state

Currently, banks cannot monitor their account positions in real-time due to lack of intraday reporting coverage. The present pain points banks currently experience when making cross-border payments center around a lack of visibility into the end-to-end transactions lifecycle. Under the current correspondent banking model, banks need to monitor the funds in their overseas accounts via debit and credit updates and end-of-day statements. The maintenance and operational work involved represents a significant portion of the cost of making cross-border payments.

“Cross border payments are like a black box for us. We don’t know when the funds will be credited, we don’t know what fees will be charged and we also have problems with reconciliation”. states Martin Schlageter, head of Treasury Operations at Swiss healthcare conglomerate Roche.

As such, the POC recognises the need for banks to receive real-time liquidity data in order to manage funds throughout the business day.

SWIFT GPI service

The PoC is being undertaken as part of SWIFT gpi, a new service that “may revolutionise the cross-border payments industry by combining real-time payments tracking with the speed and certainty of same-day settlement for international payments”.

The SWIFT gpi should be seen as SWIFT’s response to the problems they faced after a series of attacks events that showed that “all was not as secure as everyone believed”. SWIFT gpi initiative was first announced at the annual Sibos conference in 2015. The project went into live production in January this year to address core problems related to speed, transparency and traceability of cross border payments.

SWIFT gpi not only delivers a much-needed improvement in the speed of transaction, but also improves overall customer experience by creating predictable settlement times and clear statuses, through additional (unaltered transfer of) information on remittances and transparency around the FX rates and fees applied throughout the payment cycle.

“The ability to deliver enhanced remittance information alongside the payment will help customers make better decisions along the payment chain, while also creating better efficiency opportunities. The decision to make gpi available in the “cloud” is also exciting, and we anticipate this will lead to the development of entirely new services, that combine SWIFT gpi with capabilities provided by banks, clients and vendors.“ says Tom Halpin, Global Head of Payments Product Management, HSBC Global Liquidity and Cash Management

Key features

Key features of the SWIFT gpi service include a secure tracking database in the cloud accessible via APIs, and enhanced business rules.

Cornerstone of SWIFT gpi is the highly innovative new cross-border TRACKER, a special tracking feature that enables international payments to be traced real-time. It allows banks to provide corporate treasurers with a real-time, end-to-end view (visibility) on the status of their payments, including confirmations of the amount credited to the beneficiaries’ account. The Tracker is available via an open API, making it compatible with proprietary banking systems worldwide – helping to ensure maximum impact of gpi benefits at a greater adoption speed.

A second key feature is the OBSERVER, a quality assurance tool that monitors participants’ adherence to the gpi business rules. Gpi’s transparency ensures that remittance information such as invoice references, is transferred unaltered to recipients.

Gpi uptake

Membership is open to any supervised financial institution that agrees to comply with SWIFT’s business rules. But also non-bank organisations can join SWIFT gpi initiative. The SWIFT gpi service has received considerable bank support across the globe. And the number of global transaction banks that are actively using SWIFT’s gpi service is continuously growing. Since its launch the number of banks that are live with SWIFT gpi has risen beyond 100, and hundreds of thousands GPI payments have already been sent across 85 country corridors. This represents more than 75% of all SWIFT cross border payments.

“The increasing number of banks going live on this service addresses the demands of corporate treasurers. Hence, banks cannot afford to not join the initiative and go live as soon as possible. Our expectation is that all of our cross-border payments will be end-to-end Swift gpi payments in the future.” Group of Swiss corporates

SWIFT expects that numerous additional banks will join the gpi initiative in the coming months. The ambition is for all countries to be live by the end of 2017.

Phased approach

Next to the design of the second phase of SWIFT gpi, that is already underway focusing on additional digital capabilities and further enhancements such as ‘a rich payment data service’, for its third gpi phase SWIFT started exploring the potential of new technologies such as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), including blockchain, through a Proof of Concept (PoC).

SWIFT Blockchain PoC

Launched in January 2017 with six founding banks the SWIFT Blockchain PoC initiative, designed to validate/explore whether blockchain can be used by banks to improve the reconciliation of their international nostro accounts (these are accounts that a bank holds in a foreign currency in another bank to handle international financial transactions for their customers) (these are accounts that a bank holds in a foreign currency in another bank to handle international financial transactions for their customers) in real –time, optimising their global liquidity. At its core, the PoC builds on SWIFT’s rulebook as part of the intraday liquidity standard gpi.

This SWIFT Blockchain PoC initiative aims to help banks overcome significant challenges in monitoring and managing their international nostro accounts, which are crucial to the facilitation of cross border payments.

“Whilst existing DLTs are not currently mature enough for cross-border payments, this technology, bolstered by some additional features from SWIFT, may be interesting for the associated account reconciliation,” “This PoC gives us the opportunity to test DLT and determine if it can be applied to this particular use case.” Wim Raymaekers, Head of Banking Market and SWIFT gpi at SWIFT

Characteristics

In developing the POC, SWIFT is leveraging the Hyperledger Fabric v1.0 technology, and combining it with key SWIFT assets, to bring it in line with the financial industry’s requirements.

“SWIFT will leverage its strong governance, PKI security scheme, BIC legal identifier framework and liquidity standards expertise to deliver a distinctive DLT PoC platform for the benefit of its community.” Damien Vanderveken, Head of R&D, SWIFTLabs and User Experience at SWIFT

The PoC application will use a private permissioned blockchain in a closed user group environment, with specific user profiles and strong data controls. User privileges and data access will be strictly governed. This to ensure that all the information related to nostro/vostro accounts is kept private. Only account owners and its correspondent banking partners will see the details.

Collaboration

SWIFT gpi member banks can apply to participate in this Blockchain PoC. Next to the 6 founding banks, another 22 banks have recently joined the SWIFT blockchain PoC. They include include:

ABN AMRO Bank; ABSA Bank; BBVA; Banco Santander; China Construction Bank; China Minsheng Banking; Commerzbank; Deutsche Bank; Erste Group Bank; FirstRand Bank; Intesa Sanpaolo; JPMorgan Chase; Lloyds Bank; Mashreq Bank; Nedbank; Rabobank; Société Générale; Standard Bank of South Africa; Standard Chartered Bank; Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation; UniCredit; Westpac Banking Corporation.

“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 adds considerable weight to the findings. We warmly welcome the new banks and look forward to their insights” says Wim Raymaekers, head of banking markets and SWIFT gpi at SWIFT.

Process

Moving forward, the SWIFT PoC Blockchain application will undergo testing, with the results scheduled to be published in September and presented at Sibos in Toronto in October. Working independently of the founding banks, the 22 institutions will act as a validation group to test in a deeper way the PoC’s Blockchain application, that is currently under development by SWIFT and the group of six founding banks. They will evaluate how the technology scales and performs.

Benefits

For banks

The potential business benefits ensuing from a successful SWIFT blockchain POC may be significant. If it proves to enable banks reconcile those nostro accounts more efficiently and in real time, that may lower costs and operational risk.

“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.

It brings together banks worldwide who want to offer an enhanced cross-border payments experience to their corporate clients. By being part of SWIFT gpi, banks may improve the quality of their correspondent relationships and networks, helping to reduce risks and management costs and improve compliance.

“Transparency is key to a good end-to-end client experience. SWIFT gpi is a significant step in the evolution of correspondent banking, which remains the primary means through which cross-border payments are delivered worldwide. Bank of America Merrill Lynch is pleased to be working with like-minded institutions around the world to better serve each other and our respective customers.” states Greg Murray, head of Global Product Management for High Value Payments and FI/NBFI Products in Global Transaction Services at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

For corporate treasurers

SWIFT gpi may enable corporates engaged in international trade to get paid for services, or delivery of goods, in a more timely fashion, enabling a faster supply chain process. It also enables a more accurate reconciliation of payments and invoices, optimizes liquidity with improved cash forecasts and reduces exposure to FX risks with same-day processing of funds in the beneficiary’s time zone.

“Being part of SWIFT gpi, and working with our industry counterparts, is giving correspondent banks a platform to examine and refine current processes, and to collaborate and explore different, more efficient ways of doing things. Ultimately, our clients will benefit most from this initiative,” Kent Marais, head of TPS product management at Standard Bank SA.

SWIFT and the banks have designed the gpi services so that banks have flexibility in how they offer the new services. They can deliver the gpi service in very different ways. Services could potentially include enhanced invoice presentment and reconciliation to facilitate financial supply chains, exchange of supply chain documentation to improve global trade, exchange and interactive enquiry of account and processing conditions to improve end-to-end straight through processing, and providing additional party and transaction information to support compliance and sanctions screening of cross-border payments.

Enhanced cross-border payment service

“SWIFT has addressed several of the pain points corporates have had with cross-border payments,” “Changes to existing corporate payments infrastructures should be very limited, if any. So hopefully, corporates won’t need to make any major investments to benefit from smoother cross-border payments.” says Magnus Carlsson, AFP’s manager of treasury and payments

Given the size of the number of banks and corporates participating in SWIFT gpi, the SWIFT Blockchain PoC may face the challenge of scalability. If that could be solved in a successful way it may be another prove of the viability of blockchain and DLT to enhance cross-border payments.