GLEIF, BIS test vLEI as trust layer for cross-border open finance

Repetitive manual checks, duplicated document submissions and lengthy onboarding: Companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face a number of hurdles when trying to do business across borders. The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) believes that organizational digital credentials, known as verifiable Legal Entity Identifiers (vLEI), are the solution for this issue and has recently tested a prototype for cross-border open finance interconnectivity.

In collaboration with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the organization demonstrated how a LEI works in a neutral interoperability layer that connects existing open finance networks in the UK, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Brazil, Hong Kong and India. The project, called Aperta, was developed and run by BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre and involved monetary authorities from the five countries.

The project addresses a longstanding challenge in cross-border finance: businesses must repeatedly prove their identity when opening accounts, accessing services or initiating transactions in different jurisdictions. GLEIF argues that reusable organizational credentials based on the Legal Entity Identifier could reduce duplication and create a common trust framework across financial networks.

According to GLEIF, the testing demonstrated how reusable organizational credentials could reduce repeated onboarding checks and accelerate account opening, payments and other cross-border financial services for SMEs.

The vLEI extends the ISO-based Legal Entity Identifier into a cryptographically verifiable organizational identity layer that can confirm both the entity behind a credential and the authority of the individual acting on its behalf. The identifier streamlines Know Your Customer (KYC) Know Your Business (KYB) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) processes for SMEs, allowing them to open business accounts and initiate payments across the border faster.

“When the LEI is added as a data attribute in a cross-border payment message, or consulted in a business account opening process, the associated legal entity can be precisely, instantly, and automatically identified across borders,” says Alexandre Kech, CEO at GLEIF.

Project Aperta also showed that LEI could support digital asset trade by enabling the exchange of verified legal entity data between financial institutions, digital asset platforms and regulators, the organization notes. The prototype was tested alongside private-sector commercial banks and FinTechs, according to the announcement.

Beyond open finance

While Project Aperta focused on financial services interoperability, GLEIF sees broader applications for verifiable organizational identity. The foundation argues that vLEI could help address emerging challenges around AI agents, automated decision-making and digital trust by allowing organizations and authorized representatives to prove their identity through cryptographically verifiable credentials.

It can also mirror real-world organizational hierarchies in digital form, so specific roles can sign specific sections of a document — with each signature serving as cryptographic evidence that the signer held a verified position within a verified organization at that exact moment.

Because vLEI is based on open standards and public infrastructure, GLEIF argues that the model could be extended beyond financial services to areas such as academic credentials, medical records, supplier certifications and regulatory filings.

Article Topics

cross-border data sharing  |  digital company ID  |  digital identity  |  GLEIF  |  identity verification  |  KYB  |  Legal Entity Identifier (LEI)  |  verifiable credentials