Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have fallen out of favour somewhat this year, but the technology underlying them hasn't. HSBC has just performed the world's first trade finance transaction using blockchain.
Alongside ING Bank NV, HSBC handled a letter of credit for agriculture corporation Cargill, which backed a shipment of soybeans transported from Argentina to Malaysia. The transaction was an end-to-end trade between a buyer and seller that was completed on one shared digital application instead of several systems.
HSBC's global head of innovation Vivek Ramachandran said: "This is an inflection point for how trade is conducted." Blockchain in this instance helped to streamline the normal paper-intensive process in trade finance which usually requires 5-10 days to exchange documents - this time it took only 24 hours! It's yet another example of how the new peer-to-peer technology is changing traditional global payment systems
Via: https://invstr.com/
