A total of 39 firms have completed a global trial of know-your-customer (KYC) on the Corda blockchain platform.
The enterprise blockchain software firm, R3, announced that its partners have completed over 300 transactions on the KYC application, which was built on the Corda blockchain platform during a four-day collaborative trial.
Some firms that participated in the project included Bank of Cyprus, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Banca Mediolanum, Natixis, and National Bank of Egypt.
The transactions were conducted in 19 countries across eight time zones. Banks were able to request access to customer KYC test data.
Meanwhile, customers could approve requests, revoke access, and update their test data, which was then automatically updated for all banks with permissions to access it.
The 39 participants deployed ran a total of 45 nodes in Microsoft Azure and they were able to communicate and manage test customer KYC data cross the Corda network using a CorDapp, which was designed and built by Synechron.
David Rutter, CEO of R3, commented: “KYC requirements present a significant challenge to financial institutions and the process is often slow and time-consuming. As our corporate membership continues to grow, there has been increasing demand for blockchain-based KYC solutions.”
“Not only does this project demonstrate how blockchain can allow institutions to retain control of and manage their own identity, but it also validates the design choices we made in our approach to privacy on Corda.”
Tim Coates, US Blockchain lead at Synechron, added: “We are proud to continue to advance KYC processes for banks, corporates, regulators and data services, and are grateful for the support of R3 and its member banks. The Corda platform solves many of the KYC-specific requirements, and supports gradual network adoption.”
Coates continued: “Blockchain’s immutability used as a new verification mechanism, and its peer-to-peer nature enabling greater data privacy, are two of the native features that have attracted many in the KYC sector to blockchain.”
“This initiative attempts to begin to solve some of the substantial problem statements behind Corporate KYC, re-working the KYC Utilities of the past – from centralised to decentralised; from trusted to trustless; from third party data stores to controlling your own data.”
Yorke Rhodes, principal of Azure Blockchain Engineering of Microsoft, said: “As financial institutions and fintechs move their blockchain projects from innovation labs to lines of business, they require a seamless integration between their preferred ledger stack and infrastructure, and a robust set of platform components and tooling to develop, manage, and optimise blockchain applications.”
“With R3 and Synechron, we have both the technology and industry expertise to help our banking sector accelerate blockchain projects aimed at solving shared business problems.”
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