The emerging influence of legal entity identifiers in payments
Michael Knorr · Journal of payments strategy & systems · 2019
Over the years, banks have invested in capabilities to utilise unique codes assigned to participants in interbank payment activity in order to identify each other. This has created high automation rates and enabled interbank payments to be processed efficiently. A similar benefit can be created when utilising legal entity identifiers (LEIs) across all participants in the payment chain. Regulatory authorities as well as the banks’ internal risk departments are concerned with the proper and unambiguous identification of participants in the payment process. This paper discusses the impact, benefits and cost of the LEI in payment instructions.