Nine Major European Banks Complete First Blockchain Financial Trades with ‘we.trade’
In a major announcement, a consortia of nine European banks have announced the successful completion of the first blockchain financial trades made using their jointly developed blockchain platform, we.trade.
‘we.trade Innovation DAC‘ is a blockchain trade solution built on IBM‘s Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform, it is aimed at servicing small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) trading within Europe.
With headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, the company is owned in equal parts by Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Nordea, Rabobank, Santander, Société Générale and UniCredit.
According to today’s announcement, these first live cross border financial transactions, involving ten companies and four banks, were executed over the past five days.
HSBC, one of the nine institutions that set up the platform as a joint venture, stated that three of its clients within Europe, managed to complete open account transactions last week using the we.trade product.
The success of these commercial trades, has proved the efficiency with which blockchain technology is able to provide transparency for businesses. IBM’s global blockchain leader, Parm Sangha said:
“As we.trade has moved from pilot applications to conducting live transactions across borders, it has demonstrated the power of blockchain technology in an enterprise setting,”
Roberto Mancone, who was previously global head of disruptive technologies and solutions at Deutsche Bank, was appointed Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the ‘we.trade’ banking venture in April 2018.
At present we.trade is available across eleven European countries: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK.
Over the coming months, it plans to increase its global reach by licensing the we.trade product to other banks who will use the technology to service their commercial clients. As stated by we.trade COO, Roberto Moncone, the next step will be:
“getting buy-in from additional banks and their customers in Europe and further afield.”
Sending and receiving money in lightening speed, with full tracking in real-time marks a significant game changer for commercial trade. Sangha of IBM described the banking blockchain solution as:
“a disruptive model that has the potential to reshape the future of global trade finance.”
The we.trade team, are having a good run, having just returned from Amsterdam with an award for ‘Most innovative use of Blockchain in the Financial Sector 2018′.
