Banks Conduct Cross-Border Trades on IBM-Powered Blockchain

A group of European banks has announced that they have completed a series of cross-border financial trades through a jointly developed blockchain platform.

According to an announcement on Tuesday, the live transactions on We.Trade were executed over the past five days between 10 companies and were facilitated by four partner banks. HSBC, one of the nine institutions involved, claimed that three of its clients took part in the platform test.

Built on IBM's Blockchain Platform, We.Trade was established by Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Nordea, Rabobank, Santander, Société Générale and UniCredit, in a bid to boost the efficiency of cross-border financial transactions.

As reported by CoinDesk in April, We.Trade was planning to begin testing the platform in May with an expected commercial release in the summer.

At the time, Société Générale told CoinDesk that the focus on small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) trading within Europe enabled the platform to scale quickly.

Parm Sangha, IBM's blockchain lead in Europe, commented in today's announcement:

"As We.Trade has moved from pilot applications to conducting live transactions across borders, it has demonstrated the power of blockchain technology in an enterprise setting."

Currently, We.Trade operates in 11 European countries, snd according to Roberto Mancone, the platform's chief operating officer, the next phase will see participants "getting buy-in from additional banks and their customers in Europe and further afield."

Euro image via Shutterstock