The Bank of America Merrill Lynch, HSBC and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) used open source Hyperledger software to create an app that replaces the paper-based transaction, they said in an emailed statement.
Information is shared between exporters, importers and their respective banks on a private distributed ledger, and a trade deal is executed automatically through a series of digital contracts, the statement said.
Each of the parties involved - the exporter, importer and both of their banks - can visualise data in real time on a tablet and see the next actions to be performed. Each action in the workflow is captured, giving transparency to authorised participants whilst encrypting confidential data, the consortium said.
Blockchain distributed ledger technology is best known for underpinning trading involving the digital currency bitcoin, but it has many other potential uses. Broadly it can be likened to a type of database that, using cryptography, can be operated as a digital public ledger for recording information, such as the transfer of assets between two or more parties.
http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2016/august/banking-consortium-claims-success-in-using-distributed-ledger-technology-/
