A group of banks - Bank of Montreal (BMO), CaixaBank, Commerzbank and Erste Group - have joined an initiative launched by UBS and IBM in 2016 to build a new global trade platform based on blockchain technology.
This platform called Batavia will be built to be openly accessed by organizations of all sizes anywhere in the world, and built to support trade finance for transactions across all modes of trade, whether goods are being transported by air, land or sea.
Batavia advances the work initiated by UBS and IBM to develop a trade finance platform built on the IBM Blockchain Platform powered by the Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain framework.
The development work is being done collaboratively by the five banks and IBM in consultation with transportation industry experts as well as the banks' customers to ensure that the platform is flexible and intuitive for customers and can be commercialized.
Batavia targets pilot transactions with customers on the network in early 2018 to test and refine the platform.
Designed to support more efficient, transparent and cost effective transactions, the new global trade financing platform will help organizations more easily build multi-party, cross-border trading networks worldwide.
Batavia will allow transacting parties to view the progress of a shipment as it leaves the warehouse, is loaded onto a plane, truck or boat and arrives at the receiving port, automatically releasing payments incrementally along each step of the process.
The platform will help connect participants in a trading network, delivering the potential to transform global trade.
The open nature of the platform, which encourages broad participation by many banks, vendors and regulators, will also help open new trade corridors, bring new players into the market and expedite processes that before were prohibitively time-consuming and expensive.
First published in Fintech Innovation