Blockchain News
Vice President at UnionBank, stated, “We’re
co-creating the blockchain platform to be
used by the rural banks”. He also added that
the long-term goal is to offer similar support
to as many banks as possible. Notably, Visa’s
blockchain-based payment system is already
being tested by the United Overseas Bank of
Singapore, Commerce Bank in the United
States, Sberbank in Russia, and the Shinhan
Bank of South Korea. These pilot programs
seem to be part of a larger effort by Visa,
which is planning to commercially launch
this proprietary payments system sometime
this year.
UnionBank CEO Wants To Focus
On SMEs
Edwin Riego Bautista, President and
CEO of UnionBank, mentioned earlier that
his institution was focusing on helping small
and medium enterprises (SME) to adopt
this new payments technology. These SMEs
have already been working as partners with
the bank’s corporate clients.
Mr. Bautista also stated that “These are
the recipients of the payments so there is
a connect to know them”. He then pointed
out that his bank had not been able to serve
them before. However, he says that his bank
is now in a much better position as far as
understanding their behavior, which it does
by using data analytics.
Visa & Chain Core Partnered
To Create B2B Connect
Back in November 2017, Visa first
introduced a trial version of this B2B
blockchain payments platform by partnering
with startup Chain Core. The startup
aims to assist organizations in leveraging
enterprise-level blockchain infrastructure.
Its partnership with Visa was announced in
a detailed press release published in October,
2016.
According to Visa, its B2B Connect
payment system will improve the payments
process between banks and their corporate
clients. The global payments technology
company plans to accomplish this by
making transactions more transparent and
predictable. Per Visa, this can be achieved
by offering
“near real-time notification
and finality of payment” to banks and their
corporate clients. Additionally, the giant
payments processor says transactions with
B2B Connect will be more secure and
trusted. That’s because all transactions are
to be executed on an immutable distributed
ledger (blockchain) and the identities of all
network participants are known, on what the
payments company says is “a permissioned
private blockchain architecture that is
operated by Visa”.
As most crypto enthusiasts would know,
organizations around the world have taken
a keen interest in blockchain technology.
Clearly, it has the potential to be used in
many different industries. Not only can it
help businesses operate more productively,
but also much more cost-effectively. With
established financial companies like Visa
exploring blockchain’s use cases, it will
further add to its legitimacy.
Omar Faridi
[email protected]
Core Magazine
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