Batavia, a global trade finance platform based on distributed ledger technology (DLT), which has been jointly developed by a consortium consisting of IBM, Bank of Montreal, CaixaBank, Commerzbank, Erste Group and UBS, “has successfully completed its first live pilot transactions with corporate clients.”
“The complexity of today’s global financial systems is making it more important than ever for networks of institutions to work together with their clients to efficiently and securely share trade data,” said Jason Kelley, general manager of IBM Blockchain Services, in the company’s press release announcing the pilot. “The members of Batavia have demonstrated how sharing data among permissioned network members can accelerate cross-border trades and bring new transparency to the financial system, both in real-time and at scale.”
“Batavia is built on the IBM Blockchain Platform, powered by The Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Fabric.” Batavia wants to provide a foundation for a future trade finance ecosystem, with end-to-end support to trade processes, including the closing of trade agreements and the execution of smart payments triggered by predetermined events in the supply chain, recorded on the blockchain. The Batavia platform is also able to integrate tracking, tracing and risk management tools, “which can be tied to key events in the supply chains and signals from IoT devices.”
The first pilot transactions included the trading of cars from Germany to Spain and raw textile materials for furniture production from Austria to Spain. The banks collaborated among themselves and with corporate clients that are active in international commerce, including textile operators Lenzing and Fluvitex, car maker Audi and car importer Domingo Alonso Group, to test the behavior of the platform in complex real-world supply chain monitoring, trade data gathering and trade finance scenarios. The pilot transactions were conducted with a variety of transportation modes, geographies and trading parties of various sizes, in order to test Batavia’s ability to scale and manage diverse transaction types.
Source/More: IBM, Five International Banks Pilot Blockchain-Based Platform for Trade Finance | Distributed
