Commerzbank and others join UBS and IBM’s blockchain project for trade finance
New York — Commerzbank, Bank of Montreal, Erste Group Bank and CaixaBank have joined an initiative launched by UBS and IBM aimed at building blockchain-based technology to support trade finance transactions. The platform, called Batavia, would help banks and their clients automate the trade finance process, which remains highly manual and paper-based, the participating companies said on Wednesday. In trade finance, banks provide funding and other services to importers and exporters to facilitate commerce. Among other things, Batavia will allow parties to track a transaction from when a shipment leaves a port to when it reaches its destination. Blockchain, which was first developed to power cryptocurrency bitcoin, is a shared ledger of data that is maintained by computers, rather than by a central authority. Over the past few years, banks have invested millions of dollars in adapting the technology to run some of their data-heavy and complex processes. Banks have been collaborating a...
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