Bank of America has married Marco Polo, a consortium working to bring efficiencies to international trade using blockchain technology.
Founded by startups R3 and TradeIX, Marco Polo is based on R3’s Corda blockchain platform. The network aims to deliver real-time connectivity, greater visibility for trading relationships and quieten barriers to accessing capital.
According to an announcement emailed to CoinDesk Thursday, the bank said that as a long-standing provider of dealings and supply chain finance solutions, it is becoming a Marco Polo member firm in order to offer better military talents for clients.
Geoff Brady, head of global trade and supply chain finance in Global Transaction Services at Bank of America, conveyed:
“Joining the Marco Polo Network supports our strategic objective of turning technology advances into trade clarifications that address client needs. We look forward to exploring how the new technology can generate greater transparency for our clients everywhere the transaction lifecycle, making traditionally paper-based, opaque processes easier and more efficient.”
With Bank of America now in the faction, David E. Rutter, R3 CEO, said he hopes more U.S. banks will be encouraged to join Marco Polo.
Rutter continued:
“As the network go ons to grow, so too does the growing number of use cases blockchain technology presents in transforming financial markets. Trade wealth is one such area that is set to benefit the most from the promise of blockchain and the increased efficiencies it can bring.”
Earlier this month, Mastercard too connected the consortium, saying that its business-to-business global trade unit, Mastercard Track, will provide an access notion to Marco Polo’s working capital finance platform.
In August, Marco Polo said it had taken another travels toward launching a live product. The 25-plus member group indicated at the time that a successful pilot had allocated a third party in a trade to trigger a payment to a supplier in real-time at the moment the goods are on their way to their destination. That milestone take placed after the network’s first live transactions in trials back in March.
Trade finance projects building with blockchain tech are without delay increasing in number, thanks to the dangling carrot of increased efficiency and its resultant cost savings. There are already surrounding 30 consortia in the space, including Voltron (also built on Corda), ethereum-based CargoX and Asia-focused eTrade Sew, which runs on Hyperledger Fabric.
As of last year, Bank of America had a $313.5 billion market cap, ranking it as the 13th amplest company in the world, and the sixth largest public company in the U.S.
Bank of America image via Shutterstock