Normal Chartered has invested an undisclosed sum into Contour, a Corda-based blockchain commerce platform, to streamline transaction settlement pro
Normal Chartered has invested an undisclosed sum into Contour, a Corda-based blockchain commerce platform, to streamline transaction settlement processes.
Contour, which rebranded from Voltron final week, lately tapped R3’s Asia chief Carl Wegner as CEO within the run-up to a full industrial launch of its digitized letter-of-credit (LoC) service, which it claims decreased processing time for LoCs from two weeks to only underneath a day in a number of pilot tasks. Normal Chartered International Head of Transaction Banking Lisa Robins mentioned Tuesday the corporate streamlined the commerce course of by slicing down on the quantity of paper wanted.
Letters of credit score are a bank-backed cost assure – transferable proof the vendor will get the cash owed. They’re an integral a part of cross-border commerce and but, in line with Contour, LoCs can take as much as 10 days to course of and settle.
Contour has monetary backing from Bain and Co., Bangkok Financial institution, BNP Paribas, HSBC, ING, SEB, R3, CryptoBLK and CTBC Enterprise Capital. Lots of these present companions have been a part of Contour’s LoC trials underneath the community’s earlier title.
“The chance price in commerce finance is big,” Carl Wegner mentioned in a latest company blog post. “Trillions of {dollars} in commodities, services are transacted each day, however the sector remains to be characterised by gradual, duplicative and costly processes. Contour delivers a community the place trusted data is shared in actual time, successfully digitizing letters of credit score throughout all customers within the transaction.”
Institutional shoppers appeared to agree. In Might 2019, 96 percent of participants in an R3-run commerce trial of 50 banks and companies indicated Voltron might enhance their finance processing.
The newly branded firm will search to capitalize on that sentiment later this 12 months. In accordance with Wegner, the corporate is “now specializing in scaling the community with extra banks, corporates and companions, and stay up for persevering with to collaborate with our rising group.”
GTR reported Contour will launch a industrial model of the product within the second half of 2020 and plans to construct out its technical employees within the interim.
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