Today HSBC announced it used the
Voltron blockchain
trade finance platform for a live Letter of Credit (LC) transaction between Australia and China.
Fox & Lillie sent a shipment of wool from Australia to China SDIC International Trade Nanjing Company. Both companies are HSBC clients.
Voltron is a consortium of eight banks which is leveraging R3’s Corda technology to digitize the LC process with the benefit of cutting the processing time and cost. The banks are HSBC, ING, Bangkok Bank, BNP Paribas, CTBC Holding, NatWest, SEB, and Standard Chartered. The group is looking to expand the number of banks involved.
“China is the world’s largest issuer of LCs by value – almost $750 billion in 2018. Digitising this market will shake up trade finance in China – reducing the amount of paperwork required to complete a transaction, shortening turnaround time and greatly lowering the cost of trade,” said Ajay Sharma, HSBC’s Asia Pacific Regional Head of Global Trade and Receivables Finance.
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