Major European Banks Collaborate on a Trade Finance Blockchain

A consortium of seven of the largest banks in Europe has reached a deal to co-develop a new shared Blockchain platform that aims to make domestic and cross-border commerce easier for small and medium-size (SME) businesses.

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The group which includes Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Société Générale and UniCredit, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) ) in Brussels under which they intend to collaborate on the development and commercialization of the new product, called Digital Trade Chain (DTC).

This new product aims to simplify trade finance processes for SMEs, for whom documentary credit is not always suitable, by addressing the challenge of managing, tracking and securing domestic and international trade transactions. The developers also say that by maintaining secure records on a digital distributed ledger, DTC will accelerate the order-to-settlement process and decrease administrative paperwork significantly.

The consortium members will initially focus on building critical mass for DTC in seven European markets: Belgium and Luxembourg (KBC), France (Natixis, Société Générale), Germany (Deutsche Bank, UniCredit), Italy (UniCredit), the Netherlands (Rabobank) and the UK (HSBC).