7 European banks form new blockchain consortium
(19 January 2017 – Europe) In a bid to simplify domestic and cross-border commerce for European small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), seven major banks have announced a partnership to create a new blockchain-based trade finance and supply chain platform called Digital Trade Chain (DTC), which aims to make
Based on a prototype by member bank KBC, the DTC will be built by it, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Société Générale and UniCredit, who have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in Brussels this week.
Still in a proof-of-concept stage, the DTC won the Efma Accenture Innovation Award for Best New Product or Service of 2016 in October.
The DTC is intended to seamlessly connect the parties involved in a trade transaction (buyer, buyer's bank, seller, seller's bank and transporter), online and via mobile devices, said a statement.
This new product would simplify trade finance processes for SMEs by addressing the challenge of managing, tracking and securing domestic and international trade transactions. DTC aims to minimise the time to execute order-to-settlement processes and decrease administrative paperwork significantly.
According to the statement, “the platform's end-to-end transparency would also give SMEs confidence to initiate trade with new partners in their home market or in other European markets.”
The banks would initially focus on building critical mass for DTC in the markets they primarily operate in: Belgium and Luxembourg (KBC), France (Natixis, Société Générale), Germany (Deutsche Bank, UniCredit), Italy (UniCredit), the Netherlands (Rabobank) and the UK (HSBC).
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