The Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub has published a report on Project Aperta, an experimental proof of concept for cross-border open finance interconnectivity. The prototype links the domestic open finance networks of the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Hong Kong SAR and India through a neutral interoperability layer using application programming interfaces, and demonstrates that secure cross-border portability of financial and payment data is technically feasible within the existing banking ecosystem. The project focused on SME banking and trade finance and was designed to preserve domestic rules, consent processes and security controls. The prototype uses a central trust framework and real-time translation and routing of data between domestic standards so participants can identify trusted counterparties, exchange financial information and support payment initiation across borders. Testing covered two use cases, overseas business account opening and the trade finance lifecycle, and involved 21 public and private sector organisations, including six commercial banks and seven third parties, in a dedicated test environment using synthetic data. A centralised architecture was selected for the prototype because it could be implemented more quickly and without changes to domestic technical standards or infrastructure, although live deployment would require legal, regulatory, governance and technical adjustments. Possible next steps include pilots by small clusters of jurisdictions with advanced open finance ecosystems, particularly for use cases tied to payment system efficiency and financial stability. The project's architectural documents, translation protocols, trust and identity designs, reference code and data models have been released as shared goods via BIS Open Tech for other jurisdictions and network operators to use.

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