Saad Ullah
HSBC FX Everywhere
The blockchain platform, named FX Everywhere, had been developed by the banking giant for settling forex trades. HSBC used nearly 3 million transactions for the declared transacted amount. Nearly 150,000 payments have been done since the platform went live in February last year.
According to HSBCs global head of currencies, Richard Bibbey, the “FX Everywhere uses distributed ledger technology to drastically increase the efficiency of these internal flow” and “conduct thousands of foreign exchange transactions within the bank, across multiple balance sheets, in dozens of countries.”
Small Portion
The press release only mentioned the total amount of money transacted and settled that was done using the blockchain platform. What it did not mention was the total settlements done by the bank that included its traditional systems. Reuters, so far, has referenced the statement for blockchain transactions made by Bibbey and that it represented only a “small” portion out of the bank’s total.
Like many other banks around the world, HSBC has also started utilizing the power of blockchain for increased performance, speed and reliability when it comes to financial transactions. It has teamed with other financial institutions to launch a trade finance platform based on blockchain in Hong Kong in November, 2018. The trading platform is named eTrade Connect and other participants include Standard Chartered bank and BNP Paribas.
Other notable banks that have started, or are looking into using blockchain include Banko Bilbao Viscazya Argentaria, a Spanish bank that completed a EUR 150 million loan with Porsche; and the Russian Sberbank, that ran a forex repo through smart contracts.
Ripple is also seeing many financial institutions joining its rank with a latest addition of 5 firms, bringing the team to grow above 200 members.
Saad Ullah
