CaixaBank, Spain’s third-largest lender by market cap after Banco Santander and BBVA, has incorporated the enterprise blockchain platform we.trade into its suite of client services.
The trade finance application, operated by a consortium of 15 European financial institutions, targets small-to-medium-sized enterprises, facilitating banking services, enabling financing and tracking cross-border trade transactions. The consortium partnered with IBM as its technology partner, using Hyperledger Fabric.
The banking collaboration indicates how much the industry is embracing blockchain technology as the next decade in global finance unfolds.
Speaking at IBM’s THINK 2019, Roberto Mancone, chief operating officer at we.trade, says the organization has made exponential progress.
“For the first time, competitors are joining forces to solve all the complexities of trade finance. We’ve moved quickly and deliberately to do it and we’ve guaranteed a user experience that enables businesses to trade, seamlessly, simply and with trust. The platform is available via the cloud for any bank to use, not just our founding members.”
We.trade describes itself as Europe’s first foreign trade platform based on blockchain technology. Designed to increase the security and traceability of national and international commercial operations, the platform streamlines processes by using smart contracts.
According to the announcement,
“The we.trade platform generates digital contracts (smart contracts) that link the commercial operation to financing or payment and to compliance with commercial conditions. This prevents companies from any risk of default, which can contribute to enhancing the internationalization of the business of many companies.”
CaixaBank, which has one of the largest digital customer bases in Spain with 6.3 million people, implemented its strategic digital transformation plan in 2019 to navigate the rapidly changing world of finance, identifying digitization as key to its core business model.
The bank’s network supports company customers in 127 countries.
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