The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) on Tuesday revealed a partnership with fintech firm, Symbiont, to provide more accurate data to financial firms through blockchain technology.
Vanguard, Citigroup, American Century Investments and Northern Trust are some of the companies participating in the initiative.
According to the announcement, the pilot project “could help providers distribute near-real-time data to global custody customers.” Through Assembly, Symbiont’s proprietary technology platform, smart contracts will be used “to create a network effect that leverages the more than 11,000 SWIFT-connected institutions globally.”
In 2017, Symbiont partnered with Vanguard to improve the distribution of price index data via blockchain, consuming $1.3 trillion worth of fund data at the time.
“By bridging Assembly and Symbiont’s smart contracts with SWIFT’s extensive network, we are able to automatically harmonize data from multiple sources of a corporate action event,” said Tom Zschach, SWIFT’s Chief Innovation Officer, adding that Assembly’s smart contract would allow “comparing information shared between participants and pointing out discrepancies, contradictions or inconsistencies between custodians.”
Due to the rise of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), the company has struggled to maintain its relevance in the international economic order. In 2017, the interbank cooperative launched its global payments innovation, GPI, seeking to improve payment tracking and fee transparency, allowing customers to send cross-border payments 24 hours a day.
In February, the European Commission decided to exclude several Russian banks from the SWIFT network due to the war in Ukraine. Recently, in a session at the Blockchain Central Davos conference, Michael Miebach, CEO of Mastercard, said that he does not expect SWIFT to be around in five years. Founded in 1973, SWIFT handles more than five billion financial messages a year and has a presence in 200 countries.
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