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After the latest addition of 42 banks, about 100 Italian banks are officially operating on the country’s banking blockchain network, Spunta, built on R3’s Corda, the Italian Banking Association (ABI) announced Tuesday.
- Banks first joined the blockchain project designed to improve interbank data transfer and settlement speeds back in March 2020 and by May, 55 banks had joined the network.
- According to ABI’s announcement, since March 204 million transactions were processed on Spunta’s infrastructure, and the association predicts this number will exceed 350 million by the end of the year.
- The blockchain speeds up the complicated process of interbank reconciliation, where banks have to agree on how much money is owed by one bank to another.
- Earlier this year, an ABI official said that traditionally, reconciliation took weeks to complete, but because the blockchain keeps a verified interbank transfer log, processing can be done within a day.
- Spunta is a project created by ABI Labs, which began trialing interbank transfers on Corda as early as 2018.
- Italian banks joined the Spunta network in waves. There have been 32 banks since March, joined by 23 more in May, and 42 more in October, according to the announcement.
- The ABI is made up of over 700 banking institutions, and announced earlier this year that Italian banks were ready to pilot a digital euro.
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