Yesterday, Standard Chartered announced it has joined blockchain consortium Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA). The international bank, boasting $14.7 billion in revenue, aims to contribute to Ethereum standards and enterprise applications in finance.
StanChart joins over 500 EEA members, including actively participating industry leaders like Banco Santander, Microsoft, IBM, EY, and J.P. Morgan. As a founder of Voltron and heavily involved in blockchain for trade finance and logistics, the bank will find good company.
“Technology enables us to facilitate trade and investment across our footprint markets, improving client experiences and offering new services,” said Dr Michael Gorriz, CIO at Standard Chartered.
“We are excited to be a part of the EEA and look forward to opportunities where we can collaborate with other leading industry players to deepen blockchain research and application in the banking sector,” he added.
In trade finance, Standard Chartered supported a project by IFFCO Singapore last week and previously completed a cross-border transaction in the country for a shipment of chickpeas. Both used Hyperledger Fabric, like the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s (HKMA) eTradeConnect platform. StanChart is a founding member of the initiative, which will be linked with China’s trade finance blockchain with the upcoming central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Voltron, however, uses R3’s Corda for its Letters of Credit focused system. The bank piloted its first Voltron oil transaction this summer. It is also a member of Corda-based Marco Polo, another leading trade finance blockchain. But did not mention that yesterday.
The firm is no stranger to CBDCs either. Last year, it partnered with the Bank of Thailand for its wholesale digital currency project. Standard Chartered said it is involved with the Monetary Authority of Singapore on Project Ubin, which has included many CBDC experiments.
Other blockchain projects include trade finance with Siemens and Marco Polo’s tech provider TradeIX, settlements for Chinese giant Ant Financial’s remittances app, a supply chain partnership with Linklogis, and the use of RippleNet.
While few, if any, of these initiatives use Ethereum, Standard Chartered has committed to working on blockchain research and standards for enterprise.
