HSBC has announced that it has completed a transaction using blockchain which it said shows the technology is commercially viable for trade finance. Together with ING Bank, the London-based bank handled a letter of credit for Cargill which relied on the blockchain technology developed by the R3 consortium with the letter of credit backing a shipment of soybeans transported from Argentina to Malaysia. The transaction was an end-to-end trade between a buyer and a seller and their respective banks that was completed on one shared digital application rather than multiple systems, according to HSBC.  “This is an inflection point for how trade is conducted,” Vivek Ramachandran, HSBC’s global head of innovation and growth for commercial banking, said in the statement. “With blockchain, the need for paper reconciliation is removed because all parties are linked on the platform and updates are instantaneous.”

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Bloomberg