RTGS.global automates financial transfers, unlocks trillions in capital with Azure

Frictionless financial processes

Like many financial sector processes, liquidity transfers are complicated, time-consuming, and subject to strict regulations. Transactions can take hours or days to complete, which means that trillions of dollars in capital is often tied up around the world when banks and governments need it most.

RTGS.global was established to transform this process. The company provides a global, cross-border network for liquidity transfers in the cloud. The service authenticates and audits real-time interbank liquidity transactions in milliseconds while delivering instant transactional integrity, robust security, and risk reduction. As a result, banks can unlock this capital to invest in other areas.

“We wanted to remove what we call ‘financial friction’ from cross-border transactions,” says Andrew Smith, Chief Technology Officer at RTGS.global. “That meant making them faster, more accessible, and less exposed to risk.”

The company estimates that delayed transactions cost global institutions more than $15 trillion a year—money that could be pumped back into economies across the world if the process were smoother. To help ensure that its customers can meet regulatory requirements, calculate liquidity in real time, instantly set up liquidity transfers, and free up this capital, RTGS.global used Microsoft Azure SQL Database ledger to create an immutable, tamper-evident record of liquidity for government and commercial banks.

Beyond blockchain

To create the ledger necessary to make liquidity visible across a shared network, RTGS.global needed certainty that banks and regulators alike would have complete trust in the process. Building, managing, and maintaining private blockchains for every separate jurisdiction would have been expensive and time-consuming, so RTGS.global sought an alternative. With SQL Database ledger, a new feature of Azure SQL Database, RTGS.global built a solution with many of the benefits of blockchain technology in a single, centralized, fully managed, and familiar SQL environment.

“We needed a private, highly secure platform that can instantly send messages across jurisdictions,” says Chris Sewell, Vice President of Engineering at RTGS.global. “With Azure SQL Database ledger, it’s simple for us to build immutable records in a centralized SQL data estate.”

RTGS.global now uses Azure to record thousands of transactions every second between hundreds of banks in the United States and Europe. The company can take advantage of all the benefits of a managed data layer with SQL Database, including high performance and throughput. And by deploying an individual node for each geographical area, each with its own SQL Database instance, RTGS.global can easily maintain the regional jurisdictional data boundaries that international transactions require. The result is more accurate liquidity calculations, anytime transactions completed in a fraction of the time, and greater cross-border transaction transparency.

Unlocking trillions in capital

Using a centralized service offering, RTGS.global saved hundreds of hours that would have been required to develop and manage its own blockchain for each jurisdiction, instead deploying a single solution for all of its customers no matter where they are. As a result, the team was able to bypass a number of time-consuming, cumbersome, and often costly processes—saving several weeks, and in some cases, months of potential effort.

For RTGS.global customers, the benefits have been vast. Treasury and foreign exchange departments in commercial banks can now perform seamless, instant, anytime transactions between international customers through the RTGS.global network, and banks can manage intraday liquidity more efficiently with real-time visibility. Instead of waiting days for clearance, transactions are now automatically settled with an instant, tamper-evident record of liquidity, which means that RTGS.global users can free up four or five days more liquid capital for other uses—or simply to generate interest.

“With Azure, we’ve been able to make life easier for treasury functions,” says Smith. “The whole process is more efficient, more effective, and essentially gives them money back in their pockets.”

Faster processes, better rates, and simpler compliance

RTGS.global also uses SQL Database to store, manage, and process rich datasets from each transaction. Then it can automatically reconcile funds in accountancy packages and assess the impact of transactions faster and at less cost, improving straight-through processing rates and potentially saving thousands of hours on manual transaction processing. This gives banks the opportunity to offer customers better rates for cross-border transactions and help ensure that they can make instant payments abroad at any time, which all adds up to a better customer experience—and a significant competitive advantage.

Regulators can rely on the immutable data that RTGS.global provides, accessing a portal to see that the ledger is cryptographically verified. This automates auditing, makes compliance simpler, and builds vital trust between RTGS.global and other network participants. “There’s huge potential here to aid global economies just by changing the way regulators treat balances or risk across networks because of liquidity,” says Smith.

Next-level innovation and growth

RTGS.global intends to use SQL Database ledger to help commercial banks remove friction from more processes. By providing a network-based view of risk while simultaneously protecting personal information, RTGS.global is aiming to improve processes related to Know Your Customer initiatives, anti-money laundering, and financial crime prevention. The company is currently forming partnerships with several major banks and is hoping to change the way liquidity transfers are approached industrywide.

“What we’ve built on Azure will accelerate innovation for the majority of the banks that use it,” says Smith. “It’s a platform that they can innovate on top of to deliver better customer experiences and boost growth.” 

Find out more about RTGS.global on LinkedIn.