The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is launching Project Aperta to explore how to reduce frictions and costs in global finance by enabling seamless cross-border data portability. The project aims to connect the domestic open finance infrastructures of different jurisdictions. The initial use case to be explored is in trade finance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with many more applications to follow.
Businesses engaged in trade finance face numerous challenges when using financial products that facilitate trade, such as letters of credit, trade credit insurance and supply chain financing. Processes are often inefficient and costly due to excessive manual paperwork and a lack of digital data portability. Digitalising trade finance can promote sustainable economic growth and support financial stability, contributing to the overall resilience of the global financial system.
Around 70 jurisdictions currently regulate open finance through various approaches, with open banking as a subset. These open finance ecosystems often operate with differing domestic standards and protocols, preventing the smooth flow of data across borders. But technologies based on proven application programming interfaces (APIs) have the potential to significantly enhance cross-border data portability via these existing ecosystems, as the true value lies in facilitating international data flows.
Project Aperta (Latin for “open”) is a collaboration between the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, the Banco Central do Brasil, the Financial Conduct Authority of the United Kingdom, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation, the International Chamber of Commerce Digital Standards Initiative and the Hong Kong University Standard Chartered Foundation FinTech Academy.
Source: BIS