Last week IBM announced they were selected by the European Digital Trade Chain Consortium, to build and host a new trade Financial platform based on IBM’s Blockchain, powered by Hyperledger Fabric.
The Platform is designed to simplify and facilitate domestic and cross-border trade for small and medium enterprises (SME’s) in Europe, while helping to increase overall trade transaction transparency.
Composed of Europe’s seven largest banks, the Consortium consists of Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Robobank, Societe Generale, and Unicredit.
The Consortium indicated they selected IBM “to make the Digital Trade Chain network a reality, and enable the Consortium of Banks to potentially serve thousands of their SME banking clients”. Essentially we are “looking for a new platform for small and medium businesses in Europe that can enable them for faster, easier and cheaper trade transactions”
The Consortium is looking to close the gap of a traditionally underserved market segment, made up of SME’s, to help them open new revenue streams, initiate new trading relationships and stimulate trade growth.
IBM intends to build the Digital Trade Chain network on Hyperledger Fabric v1.0.0, an open source Blockchain framework, and one of the five Hyperledger projects hosted by the Linux Foundation, and hosted on the IBM Cloud.