In order to give financial firms more accurate data using blockchain technology, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) announced a cooperation with the fintech startup Symbiont on Tuesday. Among the businesses taking part in the programme are Northern Trust, Citigroup, American Century Investments, and Vanguard.
The trial project, according to the release, may enable providers to distribute data to clients of worldwide custody in almost real-time. By leveraging the 11,000+ institutions connected to SWIFT internationally, Symbiont’s patented technology platform (Assembly) and smart contracts will be implemented to generate a network effect.
Since its founding in 1973, SWIFT has operated in 200 nations and processes more than five billion financial messages annually.
According to Tom Zschach, chief innovation officer at SWIFT, they may automatically synchronise data from many sources of a corporate action event by combining Symbionts Assembly and smart contracts with SWIFT’s massive network. By utilising data from $1.3 trillion in funds at the time, Symbiont and Vanguard teamed up to increase the circulation of price index data through blockchain in 2017.
He continued by saying that the smart contract created by Assembly will make it possible to compare the information given by participants and identify any anomalies, contradictions, or inconsistencies between custodians.
The development of central bank digital currency (CBDC) has prompted the corporation to work hard to be relevant in the global economic system. The global payments innovation, or GPI, was introduced by the interbank cooperative in 2017 to improve fee transparency and payment tracking while enabling customers to send cross-border payments whenever it suits them.
Due to the conflict in Ukraine, the European Commission decided in February to deactivate the SWIFT network for several Russian banks. The CEO of Mastercard, Michael Miebach, recently stated during a panel discussion at the Blockchain Central Davos conference that he does not believe SWIFT would be unusable in five years.