ICICI Bank on-boards over 250 corporates on its blockchain platform for trade finance
ICICI Bank, on Tuesday, announced that it has successfully on-boarded over 250 corporates on its blockchain platform for domestic and international trade finance.
Earlier, in August 2016, the bank became the first in the country and among the first few globally to successfully undertake pilot transactions in international trade finance and remittance, in partnership with Emirates NBD.
Since then, more than 250 corporates have signed up on the bank’s blockchain application to experience a more time-, cost-efficient and secure way of undertaking domestic and international trade transactions.
According to the bank, the usage of blockchain technology simplifies the paper-intensive trade finance process by bringing counterparties on the same platform, enabling decision making in almost real time.
Further, it also brings in the improved convenience of accurate and quick transactions, eliminating the need to wait for courier of paper documents across cities or countries and verification through trade intermediaries. This is in contrast to the current process, where counterparties await the receipt of massive paper trails to initiate domestic or international trade finance transactions.
Transactions include cross-border remittance for salary payment to employees of a group company of an organisation, domestic vendor payments in another city, and payments for raw materials to a domestic channel partner, among many others.
Commenting on the development, Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO, ICICI Bank said,
“ICICI Bank has a rich legacy of leveraging the latest technology to bring in new paradigms in banking. We were the first in the country and among the few globally to pioneer cross-border open account trade finance and remittance transactions on blockchain. I am delighted to share that we have scaled up the operations to sign over 250 corporates on our blockchain solution for trade transactions, the maximum for any blockchain solution in the country.”
The bank also stated that it is collaborating with peer banks and other partners to create a comprehensive ecosystem in the industry using blockchain and evolving common working standards to contribute to even greater adoption of this initiative.
The blockchain application created by ICICI Bank also digitises the paper-intensive international trade finance process as an electronic, distributed and unalterable ledger, and gives the participating entities, including banks, the ability to access a single source of information.
The solution also enables the parties- buyers and sellers across domestic and international locations, all branches and locations of ICICI Bank in the country and overseas, to view the data in real time. Additionally, it allows them to track documentation and authenticate ownership of assets digitally and execute a trade finance transaction through a series of encrypted and secure digital contracts. Further, it allows each participant to check online the status of the application and transmission of original trade documents through a secure network.