15 Major Indian Banks Teaming-Up For Using Blockchain Technology; Create A New Company 'IBBIC'

15 major Indian banks, including State Bank of India (SBI), along with ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra, Axis Bank, and 11 others, have joined hands to form the Indian Banks’ Blockchain Infrastructure Pvt Ltd (IBBIC) that will utilize the blockchain technology for the processing of inland letters of credit (LCs).

Letter of Credits (LCs) are letters from a bank that guarantee that a buyer will pay the seller on time, and for the correct amount. Currently, the process of issuing an LC is relatively slow and requires human intervention to prevent frauds, authenticate transactions, and balance the ledger.

This group of banks have formed a new company called the Indian Banks’ Blockchain Infrastructure Company Private Limited (IBBIC), reported Economic Times. 

These 15 banks --10 private sector banks, 4 public sector banks and a solitary foreign bank -- will each hold an equal 6.66% stake in the newly formed company.

The IBBIC will have a total capital of Rs 75 crore with each of the participatory banks having agreed to invest Rs 5 crore each in it. Other banks can also join the company as it is expected to start operations within a year with the recruitment process set to begin later this year.

The new system will be based upon Infosys’ Finnacle Connect, a licensed core banking software product from Infosys. Notably, Infosys Finacle, which is a part of Infosys' subsidiary EdgeVerve Systems, had announced that through their partnership with R3, an enterprise blockchain software company, had completed the blockchain-based trade finance application trial.

In that trial, a total of 18 banking groups joined the Finacle Trade Connect test network. The test network is a trade finance application based on blockchain technology which is available on the Corda platform of R3.

Coming back to IBBIC, the participating banks in this joint venture are: HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IndusInd Bank, Federal Bank, IDFC First Bank, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, RBL Bank, Mahindra Ban, State Bank of India (SBI), Bank of Baroda (BoB), Indian Bank, Canara Bank and Standard Charter.

To recall, India's first financial transaction using blockchain technology was done by India unit of HSBC in November 2018 and it was for a deal involving an export by Reliance Industries to its client Tricon Energy in the US.

TCS to develop Azure & R3 Corda-based Blockchain Platform for Cross-Industry Solutions

India's largest IT & software consultancy company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has announced that it is developing solutions to drive scaled adoption of blockchain across industries, using technologies from Microsoft Azuere and Corda Enterprise blockchain platform of R3, a blockchain software firm.

TCS already offers blockchain solution called 'Quartz'. However as the Quartz is focussed for the financial industry TCS sees the need for horizontal cross-industry platforms on which scalable solutions can be rapidly developed.

TCS plans to scale up hybrid cloud infrastructure with new capabilities and a micro-services architecture which will enable enterprise customers to digitally transform their business while uncovering new business value.

TCS, which recently become third-most valued IT brand in the world, has identified and is developing 5 blockchain platforms that include, digital identity, track and trace, assets in common, asset monetization, and tokenization. Across these horizontal platforms, TCS has identified numerous solution opportunities and is building them out by leveraging their respective customer and partner networks.

Industry application of blockchain technology is widespread in areas like management of component lifecycle in manufacturing, digital assets rights, electronic health records management, software IP protection, peer-to-peer insurance, and many more. Platforms developed through the alliance will be equipped with complete DevOps kits wherein assets from all three companies would be available for rapid design, building, and deployment. 

“By collaboratively identifying the base capabilities needed for
disruptive ecosystem use cases and by extracting reusable assets from
engagements that we have executed, we are in a strong position to build
and test minimum viable platforms for customers,” said Lakshminarasimhan
Srinivasan, global head, Blockchain Services, TCS. “Some of the anchor
solutions that we are building on these platforms include skills
marketplace, anti-counterfeiting of luxury goods, affordable mobility,
shared telecom infrastructure for 5G, and loyalty and rewards programs.”

“Microsoft has been in the forefront of helping enterprises adopt
blockchain technology with its Azure Blockchain offerings and DevOps
kits,” said Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice president, One Commercial
Partner, Microsoft. “This relationship would be valuable in
accelerating adoption of these toolkits as well as in identifying future
needs for rapid solution development and cloud hosting.”

“This alliance is not just about bringing together each company’s products and services. It represents a rare opportunity for us to learn and develop solutions alongside one another so that the partnership is more than the sum of its parts,” said David E Rutter, CEO, R3.

"It also provides a valuable ability to leverage joint networks of customers and partners to rapidly accelerate the adoption of Corda in key focus areas for R3, such as insurance, asset tokenization and digital identity verification," said Rutter, CEO of R3.

Specifically designed for businesses, R3's Corda was open-sourced back in November, 2016 with an aims to allow build interoperable blockchain networks that transact in strict privacy.

Founded in 2014 by Rutter, R3 leads a consortium of more than 200 firms in research and development of distributed ledger usage in the financial system and other areas of commerce. It is headquartered in New York City.

Source - Computer World
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Kerala's Federal Bank is Building Open-Source Blockchain based Remittance App

Kerala accounts for 35% of all foreign remittances that come into India and one bank that predominates in Kerala is Federal Bank, a major commercial bank in India that accounts this 35% of the remittances that come into Kerala. Seeing this, the bank is building a new cross-border remittance application on Corda, a Blockchain platform developed by consortium firm R3.

R3 (R3CEV LLC) is a distributed database technology company supported by a more than 200 firms including banks and financial institutions such as Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, HSBC, RBS and Temasek, among others.

R3's Corda, on top of which Federal bank is building its remittance app, is an active open source project that is free to use and available with an Apache 2 license. Corda's code was open-sourced in November 2016.

Bangalore-based blockchain startup DigiLedge is helping Federal bank to develop this remittance app for “faster and cheaper” remittances.

Digiledge has built an international remittance platform built on CORDA DLT platform. The platform helps banks and money exchange houses to improve the operational efficiency of international money transfer process by exploiting the properties of distributed ledger.

According to Digiledge's CEO Mahesh Govind said that Corda brings the benefits of “confidentiality and privacy of business transactions.”

Federal Bank said in a statement, “We at Federal Bank have been practicing the philosophy of ‘Digital at the fore and human at the core’ for all our operations. When it comes to serving our [non-resident Indian] clientele, we employ the best of class technology to make them feel closer to home. This platform translates into safer, faster and cheaper foreign remittances to India.”

World Bank data indicated that India was the beneficiary of about $69B in remittances, and Federal Bank is aiming to corner this lucrative market.

Source - U. Today

Milestone Achievement As R3 Blockchain Opens to All

At IndianWeb2, we try our very best to keep you updated with the ever-growing world of Blockchain technology, and here's the latest on the same. R3 CEV, the financial technology firm led by former ICAP electronic broking CEO David Rutter, is the latest to make its Blockchain, which is a kind of distributed ledger that has the potential to completely revamp the banks’ back offices with modernised software, open to all. A while back, we had reported about how the New York based firm was considering doing the same.

A number of Wall Street majors and startups have been for a long time looking to build products that will have the capability of replacing, or maybe even supplement, the current financial infrastructure in place. People who are pitching for the technology, which is the fundamental innovation underpinning cryptocurrencies like the Bitcoin, say that it streamlines settlements as well as the execution of certain legal contracts, thus making the business processes more secure, less prone to error, and quicker than ever.

In an effort to attract the attention of adherents to its this highly impressive concoction, R3 CEV decided to post the source of its distributed ledger prototype, Corda, on the code-sharing website Github. In addition to this, the company has also come up with a website, Corda.net, where all the supplementary materials for developers and enthusiasts can be easily found and accessed.

Speaking to Forbes about the company's move to open source its Blockchain, Richard Brown, R3’s chief technology officer said, the main intention of the company in taking this step is to encourage other people in the community to contribute to it, to build on top of it, to drive its design and adoption. He also said that he is quite hopeful that a lot of people will be downloading it and making a substantial use of it.

The more the number of people employing R3’s tech, the more valuable it keeps on becoming. It could end up being a classic network effect case.

Starting its journey just two years ago, R3 has had quite an amazing journey till now, and has managed to draw more than 70 of the world's bestest financial companies into its circle, including great names like Bank of America, Barclays, and J.P. Morgan Chase. Corda is almost similar to a crowing victory for the

founded two years ago, has drawn more than 70 financial firms into its orbit, including heavy hitters such as J.P. Morgan Chase jpm , Barclays bcs , and Bank of America bac . Corda is the crowning achievement of the consortium's collaboration till date.

From now onwards, Corda will be available globally to all and not just to the members of the consortium.

Despite a great run, R3 is currently facing a number of critical departures from its team, who are leaving the group so as to focus on their blockchain dreams and efforts somewhere else.

R3 has joined hands with the Hyperledger Project, which is an arm of the Linux Foundation, a non-profit organization that works towards promoting the open source Linux OS.

R3 is not the only one which has open sourced its software to the world. October saw Chain, one of R3's main rival, releasing an open source version of its much talked about Chain Core blockchain software, thus allowing everyone to extend a hand in contributing improvements to its code and applications on top of its network. A number of other firms like Digital Asset Holding, Ripple etc. have open sourced parts of their codebases as well.