HSBC to Ally with Korean Banks for Commercial Launch of Voltron Blockchain
HSBC Bank Plc, one of the largest banking and financial institutions in the world, is looking to form a strategic partnership with South Korean lenders in a bid to make its Voltron distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform commercially available for the settlement of trade invoices and more, reports The Korea Times on March 12, 2019.
HSBC Taking Voltron Blockchain System to the Next Level
Per sources close to the matter, the Voltron blockchain solution for trade finance is presently in its pilot stage; however, HSBC is now looking to collaborate with local South Korean banks, as well as tech firms to launch the solution at a commercial scale.
Reportedly, HSBC is now seeking to forge formidable alliances with organizations committed to establishing a robust blockchain system that will be managed and governed by a cooperative.
According to the report, at current, it takes about five to ten working days and sometimes up to 30 days for financial institutions in the region to process the letters of credit exchanged between importers, exporters and other market participants.
However, the Voltron blockchain solution reportedly streamlines the entire process and reduces the time required to process these documents to just 24-hours
The team claims that the Voltron solution fosters transparency, efficiency, and superfast trade financing. Commenting on the development, Joshua Kroeker, innovation director at HSBC declared that:
“The biggest impact of Voltron would be time. Time and transparency will enable companies to manage their cash flow and working capital better.”
Importantly, the Voltron system will function as a permissioned distributed ledger, where authorized and validated parties will be able to share sensitive and relevant information in real-time.
HSBC Blazing the DLT Trail
In October 2018, HSBC joined forces with other leading financial institutions including BNP Paribas, CTBC Holding, ING, NatWest, SEB, Bangkok Bank, and Standard Chartered to launch the Voltron pilot on R3 Consortium’s Corda platform.
The primary aim of creating the Voltron initiative is to use blockchain technology to make transacting letters of credit a more efficient process.
In November 2018, BTCManager informed that HSBC had executed a blockchain-based transaction for India’s Reliance Industries, in collaboration with ING Bank.
