On Sunday, November 4th, Indian business newspaper The Hindu Business Line reported that HSBC, the world’s leading banking and financial services company, and the Indian subsidiary of Indian holding giant Reliance Industries (RIL) have completed blockchain trade financing transactions.
Blockchain-driven Letter of Credit (LoC) transactions is reported to be the first such transaction in India, involving RIL exports to US customers Tricon Energy, which is sufficient to reduce the time and cost of processing documents.
The Indian Business Hotline stated that the new system represents a significant improvement in global export market interactions by bringing all parties together on one platform.
According to the article, the transaction solution has been implemented through the integration of blockchains with an electronic bill of lading (eBL) platform called Bolero. The Bolero eBL system was first introduced in November 2016, allowing the issuance and management of electronic bills of lading and the digital transfer of goods from the seller to a buyer.
Sri Lankan Venkatachari, RIL’s co-CFO, commented that the new blockchain deployment has demonstrated the enormous potential to reduce the “export document management” from the “existing seven days to less than one day” schedule.
Earlier this week, a number of major global banks, including HSBC, BNP Paribas, and Standard Chartered Bank, launched a blockchain platform to address international trade finance issues.
According to reports, the platform called eTrade Connect can reduce the time required to approve a trade loan application from 36 hours to 4 hours.
In May of this year, the international daily “Financial Times” reported that HSBC completed the first global trade finance transaction driven by the blockchain.
