Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. to Launch Funding services on Marco Polo Blockchain

Japanese banking giant Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) is launching blockchain-powered trade funding facility in the second half of 2019, CoinDesk reported.

Talking at the latest Tokyo fintech seminar, SMBC’s vice president, Yasuyuki Kawasaki, said unique services for import and export firms will be unveiled by making use of the Marco Polo trade finance blockchain platform.

The media news follows a triumphant proof-of-concept (PoC) conducted this February. SMBC, Japan’s third largest bank in terms of assets, said that the platform had “the flexibility to expand to accommodate additional modules, provide paperless, real-time connectivity and easier access.”

SMBC is really the only Japanese bank between several Marco Polo’s 15 member banks, including ING, Commerzbank, BNP Paribas, Anglo-Gulf Trade Bank, NatWest, and many others.

Introduced in September 2017, Marco Polo is a platform created by the world’s top financial institutions and administered by enterprise software company R3 and trade finance technology expert TradeIX. In March, the product successfully conducted its first trade finance operations, an operation involving two German firms and Commerzbank.

In March, the platform was successfully employed to conduct first ever trade finance operations, an endeavor concerning two German firms and Commerzbank. While providing the info at a Tokyo fintech seminar, Yasuyuki Kawasaki, SMBC’s vice president, said. “Trade finance[…] is very complicated, and many of the documents needed for trading are paper-based and complex. This time-consuming mechanism has been going on for the past 100 years. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation signed up with Marco Polo to develop a global platform and is planning to offer new facilities later in 2018.”

Marco Polo said in a news release dated April 25 that BayernLB, Helaba and S-Service Partner has signed up with the network to trial and evaluate real world use cases. Worldwide organizations are progressively exploring blockchain capability to improve trade finance procedures.

Other blockchain-centered trade finance efforts involve Voltron and We.Trade, as well as Marco Polo. Multiple trade finance programs are under advancement globally, with China unveiling its very own collaboration this week encompassing its central bank, China’s People’s Bank. Meanwhile, French bank Societe Generale used Ethereum (ETH) blockchain to issue € 100 million bonds in April.