Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates completes BIS-led Project Aperta for secure cross-border open finance

The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates announced the successful completion of Project Aperta, an international initiative led by the Bank for International Settlements to enable secure and interoperable cross-border open finance. The project created a trusted interoperability network linking the open finance systems of multiple jurisdictions, allowing secure, real-time cross-border financial data exchange without changing domestic open finance frameworks. Developed with the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Central Bank of Brazil and the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority, the project tested two use cases across five economies. These covered cross-border data portability, aimed at faster onboarding and fewer manual checks through secure sharing of verified business information, and trade finance lifecycle management, using structured digital data from contract issuance to final settlement. The tests showed that cross-border data exchange can work while preserving domestic rules, security requirements and supervisory oversight, and highlighted scope to reduce duplication, compliance costs and onboarding times for small and medium-sized enterprises involved in international trade. All architectural blueprints, translation protocols, trust framework designs, reference code and data models from the project have been released as open public goods for reuse by other jurisdictions.