The blockchain-based trade finance coalition Voltron has swelled to over 50 banks and corporates following the completion of trials involving the simulation of multiple digital Letter of Credit transactions across 27 countries on six continents.
The Voltron initiative, built on R3’s Corda blockchain platform, uses blockchain technology to reduce the time it takes to execute the entire process of paper-based Letter of Credit from 5-10 days to under 24 hours. 96% of participants in the trial said Voltron will accelerate their Letters of Credit process, improve efficiencies and reduce cost.
Leading institutions including ABN Amro, Alfa Bank, Banco de Crédito del Perú-BCP, Banorte, Bci, China Everbright Bank Hong Kong Branch, CIB, CommerzBank Commercial Bank of Qatar, Ekman & Co, LH Trading, MUFG, Natixis, National Bank of Egypt, RBI, SABB, Scylla, Standard Bank, Societe Generale and The Saudi British Bank participated in the latest six week trial, which was delivered by a partnership of Bain, CryptoBLK and R3 on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.
This builds on a number of successful live transactions on Voltron in 2018 and earlier this year, which demonstrated the improved speed and reliability of the permissioned network for Letters of Credit.
Chris Sunderman, blockchain initiative lead trade finance at ING and Voltron founding member bank says: "The trial has been a great collaboration between banks and corporates, R3 and CryptoBLK and it ensures a better understanding of the possibilities and benefits of Voltron: the end-to-end digitisation of letters of credit. This will help in broadening the support base of Voltron and it will grow a larger and geographically well spread network of banks to adopt it, enabling an increased number of transactions in the production phase."