China Banking Body to Develop Multi-Use Blockchain Platform With Major Banks

China’s self-regulatory bank organization the China Banking Association (CBA) will launch a blockchain-based platform to improve efficiency across the sector, participants confirmed in a statement Dec. 29.

The project, formally dubbed the ‘China Trade Finance Inter-bank Trading Blockchain Platform,’ aims to use blockchain to target trade finance, transactions and other financial services.

Multiple guinea pigs have signed up to pilot the platform, among them well-known names such as HSBC, Bank of China and Ping An Bank.

“The establishment of this inter-bank platform can be described as extraordinary, opening up barriers between different banks and realizing the interflow of information,” HSBC China vice president and head of industrial and commercial finance Fang Xiao told local news outlet China News, adding:

“The use of blockchain technology to promote trade finance reform has become a global trend. The HSBC Group's overseas blockchain trade pilots show that the blockchain is used to improve the efficiency, safety and scale of trade.”

China continues to advance its state-level use of blockchain in a bid to capitalize on the benefits the tech has proven to provide in its short history.

Technical support for the inter-bank project will come from Chinese entities including application startup PeerSafe, which is also a Hyperledger consortium participant.

Among the sponsors for the platform’s construction is the United Nations Development Bank, as well as several of the ten banks lined up as testers.

A working version should appear sometime in 2019, the statement says, adding that it would enact plans for expansion once it was running smoothly. These, it says, will include attracting smaller banks, along with increasing the scope of applications to include taxation and customs entities, among others.

As Cointelegraph recently reported, Saudi Arabia, Canada and others are currently examining blockchain implementations for areas such as customs and trade finance.