Banks with a combined market capitalization of nearly $600 billion have opted for the R3 CEV distributed ledger consortium over SWIFT’s global payment innovation initiative, introduced today.

There are 45 banks in SWIFT’s initiative, which aims to make more payments data accessible to corporate treasury departments. But R3 has scored a total of 42 members to date, and the following banks have signed on with R3 and not SWIFT’s new initiative:

• BMO Financial Group
• CIBC
• Commonwealth Bank of Australia
• Goldman Sachs
• Macquarie Bank
• Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
• Morgan Stanley
• Nomura
• Northern Trust
• OP Financial Group
• Scotiabank
• State Street
• U.S. Bancorp
• Westpac Banking Corporation

Yes, R3 and SWIFT GPI, as the new program is called, are different, but it is interesting to compare the rosters of the two payments initiatives, especially as R3 inches closer to SWIFT’s business turf. Of course, SWIFT has some big names R3 doesn’t, most notably ICICB and Bank of China, but it is surprising that SWIFT’s chief marketing officer needs to tout the participation of prominent banks as “proof of the importance of this global payments innovation initiative.”

It should be pointed out that sources tell us R3’s cost for admission is, well, “nominal” at best. But there’s a laurel to just signing up a JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America, even if no check is written to R3.

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