The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation and the Bank for International Settlements have presented Project Aperta, a prototype showing that Legal Entity Identifiers can streamline Know Your Customer and Know Your Business checks and anti-money laundering processes for small and medium-sized enterprises using open banking and open finance APIs to make cross-border payments or open business accounts. The project shows that when an organization identifies itself with an LEI, firms can reduce duplicated checks, lower compliance costs and shorten onboarding times. Run by the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre, the prototype created a neutral interoperability layer linking domestic open finance networks in the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Hong Kong and India. The release frames this as a way to overcome differences in technical standards, data formats and trust frameworks that currently force repeated manual reviews and document submissions for businesses operating across borders, particularly SMEs, and says it addresses two pain points identified in the G20 Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-Border Payments. The work involved the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Central Bank of Brazil, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates and the Financial Conduct Authority, and was tested with commercial banks and FinTechs. It also points to possible use of LEIs in tokenized finance and cross-border digital asset transactions through the exchange of verified legal entity data among financial institutions, digital asset platforms and regulators.

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