The Hong Kong arm of Standard Chartered Bank announced today that the bank has successfully completed its first cross-blockchain platform transaction between Hong Kong and Mainland China.
Standard Chartered Hong Kong is a founding member of eTradeConnect, a DLT-based platform helping customers and trading partners to conduct trade and trade financing in a cost-efficient way.
Standard Chartered executed the transaction through a recently established connectivity between eTradeConnect in Hong Kong and the People’s Bank of China Trade Finance Platform (PBCTFP) in Mainland China.
Standard Chartered Hong Kong participated in the pilot transactions as one of the seven banks to test the connectivity and Execution between the two trade platforms focused on Blockchain technology. The process successfully helped clients in Hong Kong to execute trade transactions through eTradeConnect with its suppliers who used PBCTFP in Mainland China to complete the trades.
Commenting on the successful completion, Ricky Kaura, Head of Transaction Banking for Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa at Standard Chartered, said: “As a key trade bank in the world, Standard Chartered plays a leading role in trade digitisation with the aim of promoting global trade and prosperity. Hong Kong is an important regional trade hub with close business ties with Mainland China. We hope the success of connecting the two blockchain-based trade finance platforms in Hong Kong and Mainland China can further boost cross-border trade benefitting both importers and exporters.”
Eliminating Delays
Trade and finance transactions involve a lot of manual paperwork and approvals that can take days and even weeks to process. However, with the help of cross-blockchain trade finance platforms, that process can now be completed easily in an efficient, secure and transparent environment.
While talking about eTradeConnect and PBCTFP, Colin Pou, Executive Director (Financial Infrastructure) of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, said: “Mainland China has been Hong Kong’s largest export and import market. The Proof-of-Concept trial (PoC) that connects eTradeConnect and the PBCTFP aims to provide importers and exporters in both places with more convenient trade finance services. We are delighted to see Standard Chartered Hong Kong’s active participation in phase 1 of the PoC and involvement in the first batch of trade financing transactions through this cross-platform linkage.”
