ing to be a big win.”
While eBAM has attracted a lot
of interest, the project is still in its
infancy and the shape that eBAM will
ultimately take is not yet clear. Propri-
etary bank offerings may have their
uses, but for companies like Microsoft,
which works with over 80 banks, a
single portal and format are critical.
“There are still very few banks
that see they have to integrate at a
multibank level to really add value to
corporations,” says Colin Kerr, industry solu-
tions manager for worldwide financial services
at Microsoft. “My opinion is that’s a fairly short-
term view. The true value to corporates is to offer
a single solution for multiple banks.”
This goal has been noted by treasury worksta-
tions, which are looking to incorporate eBAM
technology into their systems. Meanwhile,
SWIFT is currently piloting a program that may
provide the bank neutrality that some com-
panies are looking for, along with a means of
ensuring that eBAM standards are interpreted
consistently across the industry.
“Right now, the community is working with
SWIFT on a pilot called the eBAM Central Utility,
looking at furthering the standardization and
the use of XML standards for eBAM,” says Stacy
Rosenthal, head of corporate and banking strat-
egy for the Americas at SWIFT. “The working
group involved vendors, banks and corporates
working together to test features, look at how to
validate that standards are OK and that they are
not being proliferated between financial institu-
tions.”
The working group has been meeting since
the beginning of 2011. The project has a global
focus, with both U.S. and global banks and cor-
porations participating, as well as corporates’
SWIFT service bureaus where applicable.
One objective of the SWIFT utility is to en-
sure that eBAM standards are interpreted in a
uniform way. “In the eBAM pilots that have hap-
pened prior to now, there have been significant
variations, whether relating to the header of
the message or the attachments and some vari-
ations of the standards,” says Rosenthal. “But
knowing what’s happened with payments and
information reporting, we really wanted to get
ahead of this and be proactive.”
The proliferation of standards is an important
consideration. With a number of banks working
on different eBAM pilots, the prospect of too
great a divergence is a real danger. “The key is to
make sure every player is focused around con-
forming to the standards we’ve all agreed to,”
says Linda Haddad, a senior vice president and
global product manager for SWIFT and eBAM at
Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
What the SWIFT eBAM utility offers is a central means of making sure that common standards are used. “The hub acts as a validation
point to ensure that the XML standards within
the FileAct package conform to the standards
and have not been overly customized,” says
Rosenthal. “The hub sits in the middle, and it
3SKey is an
example of
where SWIFT
can be a catalyst for
industry-wide process
improvement.
—AKZONOBEL’S VAN ROOD
validates the standard and the format of the files
and transactions passing through it.”
In addition, the utility provides an online user
interface that enables companies to send eBAM
instructions as an alternative to using bank-
specific solutions or eBAM solutions in treasury
workstations. This will be available to corporates
that do not connect to SWIFT as well as those
that do. Another feature of the hub is a database
designed to support the requirements of doing
business in different countries and regions.
The utility is currently being tested and the
results of the pilot are due to be showcased at
SIBOS later this month. “The results of the pilot
will dictate where we go next: whether we do go
live with the solution; whether it’s going to be
cobranded with the industry; whether it’s going
to be offered directly through SWIFT or through
the banks,” says Rosenthal.
Another aspect of SWIFT’s eBAM offering—its
3SKey digital identity solution—is already available to corporate users. As Intel’s Davis notes, the
ability to replace “wet” signatures with digital
signatures is an important aspect of eBAM. As
such, SWIFT’s recently introduced 3SKey is very
much a complementary solution to eBAM.
“When you get into electronic bank account
management, the next question is how to make
sure you are who you say you are in terms of iden-
tity,” explains Dignen. “So SWIFT moved into
that space with 3SKey, which is a digital identity
product. EBAM and 3SKey go hand in hand.”
SWIFT launched 3SKey in October 2010 fol-
lowing a pilot in France that involved several
banks and corporates. The product aims to
replace the multiple tokens and passwords com-
panies use with different banks with a single
USB token that can be used across all banks. The
token contains a unique, anonymous certificate,
but unlike some other token technology it does
not include any personal information. While
3SKey’s role in eBAM is significant, for some
corporates the introduction of a standardized
digital identity solution is worth getting excited
about in its own right.
France Telecom, best known for its Orange
smartphone brand, connects to SWIF T via a
service bureau and in the past has worked with
SWIFT on the development of XML standards for
the ISO 20022 credit transfers now used for the
Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). As early as
2003, France Telecom began to raise with SWIFT
the possibility of developing a standardized
