The transaction followed a deal for Cargill, completed between HSBC and Dutch bank ING, when a shipment of soybeans has been transported from Argentina to Malaysia via the global commodities trader’s Geneva and Singapore subsidiaries, the British lender said in a statement.
While there have been other trade finance deals that use blockchain in conjunction with other technologies, the Cargill transaction marked the first use of a single, shared digital application rather than multiple systems, according to HSBC.
The transaction has been executed on a platform called Corda, developed by R3, a New York-based blockchain consortium whose members include more than 100 banks, regulators and trade associations.
Citing a United Nations study, HSBC representatives declared that putting all of Asia Pacific’s trade-related paperwork into electronic form could lower the time it takes to export goods by up to 44% and cut costs by up to 31%. Blockchain uses a distributed ledger maintained by a network of computers to verify transactions, rather than a centralized system.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now