More major Banks unite with UBS-Backed Blockchain Trade Finance Platform

The list of the largest banks joining the Swiss bank on the Blockchain Trade Finance Platform project keeps growing.

Four more world reknown banks have joined the trade finance project launched Octoebr last year by the Swiss based bank UBS and tech giant IBM.
Full list below:
BNY Mellon
Deutsche Bank
Santander
brokerage ICAP (NEX)

Barclays
Credit Suisse
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
HSBC
MUFG
State Street
Bank of Montreal
CaixaBank, Commerzbank and
Erste Group

The Blockchain project is being built on top of the open-source Hyperledger Fabric framework. The platform, dubbed Batavia, was first announced October 2016 at the Sibos banking conference in Geneva.

The USC would be convertible at parity with a bank deposit in the corresponding currency, making it fully backed by cash assets at a central bank. To simplifie things, spending a USC will be similar to spending the real currency it is paired with.

Blockchain works as a tamper-proof shared ledger that can automatically process and settle transactions using computer algorithms, with no need for third-party verification.

A huge advantage is that it does not require manual processing, nor authentication through intermediaries, the technology can make payments faster, more reliable and easier to audit.

Essentially. the core idea of the project is to build a system through which international trade transactions can be carried out from start to finish. Instead of paper-based letters of credit, trade finance transactions would be executed through smart contracts – self-executing pieces of code that trigger when certain conditions are met, instead.

They aim to start a test phase involving customers sometime early 2018.

QUESTION: How well these major financial institutions will do on the blockchain-cryptocurrency era?