Members of six African banks reportedly met yesterday to discuss the next steps in their ongoing effort to connect aspects of the South African banking system via a private version of the ethereum blockchain, according to sources.
Present at the event was CIO of Barclays Africa's corporate and investment banking division, Andrew Baker, who said that while the unnamed banks are still in the early phases of the "most pure collaborative process" he’s ever participated in, the effort has been propelled by a surprising technology – instant messaging.
After some early internal work within Barclays subsidiary, Absa, including logging archived payments on a blockchain and writing simple ethereum-based smart contracts, Baker created a WhatsApp group and invited a few of his peers at competing banks.
By giving those bank representatives administrative access to the blockchain group, he said the team of would-be competitors quickly grew to 50 members from six of South Africa’s largest banks.
From there, he said the group has invited an unnamed regulator and a payments service provider, and as of last Friday, the group had successfully networked together on the ethereum blockchain.
More:
http://www.coindesk.com/south-africa-diy-ethereum-blockchain-tests/
