SME Finance Forum member ICICI Bank, India’s largest private sector bank by consolidated assets, announcee that it has successfully on-boarded over 250 corporates on its blockchain platform for domestic and international trade finance, the most by any bank in India. With this, leading Indian corporates, including ones from the ‘S&P BSE 100 Index’, are now undertaking domestic / international trade finance transactions on the Bank’s custom-made blockchain platform.

This initiative marks another milestone in the Bank’s pioneering role to promote blockchain in the banking industry in the country. In August 2016, ICICI Bank became the first bank in the country and among the first few globally to successfully undertake pilot transactions in international trade finance and remittance in partnership with Emirates NBD.

Since then, more than 250 corporates, including the country’s leading companies have signed up on the Bank’s blockchain application to experience a more time and cost efficient and secure way of undertaking domestic and international trade transactions. The usage of blockchain technology simplifies the paper-intensive trade finance process by bringing counterparties on the same platform, enabling decision making in almost real time. It brings in the improved convenience of accurate and quick transactions, eliminating the need to wait for courier of paper documents across cities / countries and verification through trade intermediaries. This is in contrast to the current process wherein counterparties await the receipt of lengthy paper trails to initiate domestic / international trade finance transactions.

Leading Indian corporates from ‘S&P BSE 100 Index’ have undertaken trade finance transactions of various types through ICICI Bank’s blockchain platform for trade finance. These include cross-border remittance for salary payment to employees of a group company of an organization, domestic vendor payments in another city and payments for raw materials to a domestic channel partner among many others.