The Emerald Benchmark is based on the well understood use case of international payments. The [SEPA ICT requirements](https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/document-library/rulebooks/2017-sepa-instant-credit-transfer-rulebook) provide an easily consumable set of real requirements for international payments.
The Emerald Benchmark is based on the well understood use case of international payments. The [SEPA ICT requirements](https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/document-library/rulebooks/2017-sepa-instant-credit-transfer-rulebook) provide an easily consumable set of real requirements for international payments. The key requirement is that payments must be sent, received and acknowledged back to the sender in less than 10 seconds.
[Ulster Bank](https://digital.ulsterbank.ie/), a wholly owned subsidary of [Royal Bank of Scotland](https://www.rbs.com/), piloted a distributed clearing and settlement mechanism (CSM) to meet the requirements for the [major banks of Ireland](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/banks-join-forces-to-test-new-payment-technology-1.3082772). It became known as [Emerald](https://emerald-platform.gitlab.io/). As part of this pilot they asked [GFT](https://www.gft.com/uk/en/index/) to independently test the CSM. The [results](https://emerald-platform.gitlab.io/static/emeraldTechnicalPaper.pdf) were made [public domain](https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/29486/rbs-tests-demonstrate-ability-of-ethereum-to-support-a-national-domestic-payments-system) in order to reduce the fear, uncertainty and disinformation in late 2016 around performance and scalability of distributed ledger technologies (DLT).
[Ulster Bank](https://digital.ulsterbank.ie/), a wholly owned subsidary of [Royal Bank of Scotland](https://www.rbs.com/), piloted a distributed clearing and settlement mechanism (CSM) to meet the requirements for the [major banks of Ireland](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/banks-join-forces-to-test-new-payment-technology-1.3082772). It became known as [Emerald](https://emerald-platform.gitlab.io/). As part of this pilot they asked [GFT](https://www.gft.com/uk/en/index/) to independently test the CSM. The [results](https://emerald-platform.gitlab.io/static/emeraldTechnicalPaper.pdf) were made [public domain](https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/29486/rbs-tests-demonstrate-ability-of-ethereum-to-support-a-national-domestic-payments-system) in order to reduce the fear, uncertainty and disinformation in late 2016 around performance and scalability of distributed ledger technologies (DLT).
