Reserve Bank of India accomplishes blockchain test

RBI’s Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) built and trialled a proof of concept (PoC) for a blockchain-based trade finance application. The IDRBT role is to evaluate technology requirements for the Indian financial sector and develops state-of-the-art banking technology products.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), banks and solution providers took active roles within the project. Among them, MonetaGo, a provider of blockchain technology solutions for financial institutions and central banks, covered the technology part.

MonetaGo is based in New York and provides tools for financial institutions to get started with intra- and interbank payments on private permissioned blockchains that are owned and operated by the participants, and interoperable with existing real-time payments and settlement systems and core banking systems.

MonetaGo CEO Jesse Chenard said for the Bitcoin Magazine that the project is the first ever, end-to-end test of blockchain technology using existing banking protocols, including regulators, banks, financial institutions and clearinghouses. “Most bank experiments to date have been either with single institutions or with only a couple of parties to a transaction,” said Chenard. “And then again, those have been in closed sandbox environments that were deployed simply for testing purposes.”