Spunta Banca DLT, 100 Italian banks on the blockchain

Spunta Banca DLT can now count on as many as 100 Italian banks that have chosen to use the blockchain. In October there was the entry of a third group of financial institutions that joined the first 32 that adhered to the project in March, and the 23 that adhered in May.

Spunta Banca DLT is the project of ABI (Italian Banking Association) and ABI Lab to bring the blockchain to the banking sector. 

Having started out quietly, with a relationship that was mainly through telephone calls, Spunta is now offering its partners a better chance to tackle a central issue: bank reconciliation. To do this, it uses blockchain technology. 

Apparently, the project is so popular that now 100 Italian banks have joined and are using blockchain nodes to solve bank reconciliation issues. But Spunta’s idea is that the blockchain made available to banks can also be used for other purposes, with new developments and applications. 

Blockchain for bank reconciliation

In the case of bank reconciliation, this often requires clients to consult multiple banks where they have accounts, and check that the transactions correspond to the actual account statements. Thanks to Spunta and the use of the blockchain and a special algorithm, it is easy to recognize transactions that do not match in the records. This makes it possible to carry out bank reconciliations on a daily as well as monthly basis. 

Spunta has so far allowed analyzing 204 million transactions of 55 different banks (belonging to the first two groups that joined the project). By the end of the year, it could reach 350 million transactions. When fully operational it could handle 8.4 billion transactions. For comparison, the Bitcoin blockchain handled 117 million transactions in 2019 alone. 

The Spunta project

Launched by 18 pilot banks, the project promoted by ABI and ABI Lab saw the technical collaboration of NTT Data and SIA, together with R3 and the Corda Enterprise platform. 

In March, 32 banks had joined the project. In May another 23 banks chose Spunta. Finally, in October, a further 42 banks started using the blockchain.

Spunta is a project destined to be exported. In fact, it is also being considered by other European banks that would like to re-propose it beyond the Italian borders. 

Italian banks, central banks and blockchain

It seems that the relationship between banks and blockchain is destined to become increasingly close. The case of Spunta involves private credit institutions. In the public sector, and therefore for central banks, the blockchain will become the basis for issuing digital state currencies, a project on which the ECB, the FED and other world banks are working. 

ABI itself had analyzed the issue and discovered that Italian banks would welcome a European digital currency. It would be a revolutionary as well as innovative system. And innovation is what banks need in order not to lose customers to decentralized financial instruments.