Banking on Blockchain

Think of a situation where a bank's know your customer (KYC) check on a corporate customer fails to show up a suspicious transaction done by the company with another bank. What if banks could share and also monetise corporate KYCs, including investigation reports and cross border wire transfer reports, on a real time basis, on a secure, private, immutable and consensus based shared digital ledger?

Similarly, how much simpler would life become for a manufacturing company mired in input credit claims under the goods and services tax (GST) if its system automatically generated and shared pre reconciled invoices with all its suppliers over a seamless and secure cryptographic ledger that is replicated and synchronised? This could help the company save hundreds of crores of rupees stuck in working capital currently.

Thirty banks and non banking finance companies (NBFCs) in India and the Middle East including State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and Yes Bank, are set to share corporate KYCs and more through BankChain a blockchain consortium set up by financial technology firm Primechain Technologies. BankChain, now rechristened Primechain Money, is going live with five blockchain platforms that include cross border remittances and peer to peer money transfers, and the banks should start using them real time from February 2018. Besides, IBM is working on an invoice management blockchain solution for manufacturing companies to tackle