Standard Chartered Finalizes First Blockchain Trade Finance Deal With Distributed Ledger Technologies

Standard Chartered Successfully Completes First Trade Finance Deal Through Blockchain

Standard Chartered, the multinational banking and financial services firm, has successfully concluded its first trade finance deal powered by blockchain. This was done by the Singapore unit of the firm.

Reportedly, the framework was developed by a blockchain start-up called Distributed Ledger Technologies and has facilitated the completion of an agribusiness supply chain transaction in under 24 hours. This usually took anywhere between five and seven days.

How It Used To Be

As of 2017, even with trade finance transactions worth well over $9 trillion, most transactions have been dependent on the regular legacy systems and still used very tedious and unattractive paper systems.

The Future Of Transactions Using Blockchain

Stanchart, which is one of the first few major banking firms to develop and use a blockchain trade platform, has revealed that today, the blockchain solution has greatly modernised the process of exchange and scrutiny of trade documents between two or more parties who want to go into business. This helps effectiveness, efficiency, but most importantly, it guarantees security, ensures transparency and heavily reduces the risk of exchange of fraudulent documents. The platform, called eTrade Connect, is now being well used by Stanchart.

Also, apart from trade finance transactions, Stanchart has also continued the development of other blockchain platforms for many other uses. Last October, the firm announced their intention to create a platform for bank guarantees that would generally rely on blockchain technology.

Stanchart has also gone into a partnership with Itau Unibanco, Brazil’s largest private bank, to launch a platform that will help people acquire small loans. This would be done via blockchain technology.