China Ever-Bright Bank Opts for Ant Financial’s Blockchain Platform for Supply Chain Funding

China Ever-bright Bank (CEB), a top commercial bank in China and one of the world’s largest listed enterprises, is employing a blockchain powered supply chain finance platform developed by Ant Financial, the financial subsidiary of e-commerce behemoth Alibaba.

Ant Financial is collaborating with CEB to deploy Duo Chain, a network services platform structured to manage supply chain linked financial dealings.

In the second half of 2019, CEB and Ant Financial entered in a partnership. CEB, notably, is the first Chinese bank to employ Duo Chain, as reported by domestic finance centered publication, Sina Finance.

As per local media outlets, Ant Financial initially rolled out the technology last year with an aim to improve supply chain finance using blockchain technology.

By description, supply chain finance (SCF) is a process of maximizing the efficiency of value chain financing. The objective of both partakers, seller and buyer, is to minimize working capital and enhance cash flow at a reduced cost by using the buyer’s credit rating.

In simpler terms, SCF offers short-term credit which permits buyers to widen their payment terms and facilitates sellers to receive payments quicks.

As of date, several firms across the globe have already employed blockchain powered SCF solutions in an attempt to improve the transparency of dealings and bring down costs of accessing credit.

As an example, London-based bank and financial services firm, Standard Chartered finished its supply chain funding deal using blockchain platform in August last year.

Earlier, China Shipbuilding Industry Company collaborated with Shanghai Bank to build a blockchain powered online supply chain funding platform two years back.

By employing Ant Financial’s Duo Chain technology, China Ever-bright Bank aims to enhance the security of SCF and remove illegal dealings.

The Duo Chain platform permits users to finish identity verification and electronic signatures with CEB, while documenting all appropriate dealings on a distributed ledger for monitoring reasons.

CEB supposedly added that the bank also integrated domestic ad external info administration systems, enterprise credit tools and other linked systems to improve efficiency and quality of its funding services.

Deployment of Duo Chain technology is not the first initiative, related to blockchain, taken by CEB. Earlier last year, China Ever-bright Bank turned out to be a member of a key domestic blockchain banking venture, the Trade and Finance Interbank Trading Blockchain Platform. China Banking Association, the self-regulatory organization launched the platform in December 2018.