ANZ, CBA, Westpac partner IBM for Lygon blockchain bank guarantee pilot

The three banks have partnered with IBM for Lygon, with Westfield shopping centres operator Scentre Group also a founding member. According to those involved, the Lygon platform has the potential to reduce the time it takes to issue a bank guarantee from up to a month to on or around the same day.

They also claim Lygon has the potential to benefit many sectors and to reduce the risk of fraud across billions of dollars guaranteed by the banks. Lygon leverages the IBM Blockchain Platform, which is built on top of Hyperledger Fabric, an open source blockchain project from the Linux Foundation.

The Lygon platform will be operated by Lygon 1B Pty Ltd, a company jointly owned by the five founding members. The pilot will run for eight weeks with live data and transactions for a test group of Westfield property leasing customers from 3 July 2019. In phases, the group plans to expand the range of digitised bank guarantees that Lygon supports across other industries, as well as offering its services to other customers in the retail property sector.

ANZ, Westpac, and Scentre Group announced in mid-2017 the completion of a blockchain-based trial with IBM that saw the companies start the process of digitising bank guarantees, inviting others to join the project.