Banks Help Corporates Overcome Their Blockchain Regulatory Concerns

Blockchain technology is no longer an outlier strategy for companies managing global expansion. PYMNTS research indicates that many of the world’s largest companies use blockchain to simplify and modernize business operations, including digital payments.

Blockchain solutions are now powering the modernization of critical business processes for leading global companies. They are among the leading global payments innovations, including solutions ranging from frictionless cross-border payments and scalable user authentication processes to smart contracts that help businesses avoid supply chain delays by ensuring rapid vendor onboarding.

The shift toward the use of blockchain technology as a global payments solution appears definitive, with most financial institutions (FIs) seeking to integrate blockchain solutions into their global operations strategy.

PYMNTS’ research found that 72% of FIs plan to introduce commercial blockchain solutions. While blockchain solutions likely will become more accessible to businesses soon, implementing blockchain solutions can still be difficult for many companies. Some of these challenges are technical, while others manifest due to perceptions of risk by decision-makers.

Cryptocurrency, Blockchain And Cross-Border Payments: Selecting A Blockchain Technology Partner, a PYMNTS report sponsored by Circle, draws from surveys of 250 multinational FIs conducted in April 2021. Businesses surveyed operated in at least two markets and generated at least $10 million in annual revenue.

While many large businesses are adopting blockchain technologies, significant concerns remain.

PYMNTS found that the blockchain adoption risks cited most by businesses were regulatory concerns (52%), uncertainty about operational efficiency (41%), data quality (37%), data security (35%) and profits (34%). The survey also showed that executives with an in-depth understanding of how blockchain works globally were less concerned about potential implementation barriers.

PYMNTS found that business executives with a deeper understanding of how blockchain technology works tended to use or exhibit openness to using the technology at a higher rate than those with little or no knowledge of it. This is understandable, as the perceived complexity regarding how blockchain technology works is often conflated with how challenging it might be to implement, even though more robust, enterprise-grade solutions are designed to remove complexity from the blockchain integration process.

Other key findings from the survey include:

• Twenty-eight percent of businesses have more than 10 employees identifying and testing blockchain use cases, while just 5% of FIs say the same.
• Forty-nine percent of businesses are investigating the use of blockchain technology because they want better data security. 
• Sixty-one percent of organizations are interested in blockchain technology to improve business operations efficiency.
• Forty-nine percent of businesses believe that devoting human resources to studying blockchain solutions options may help them fight fraud.

To learn more about why businesses are open to blockchain technology solutions, download the report.