Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions is teaming up with Nasdaq to develop a blockchain solution for commercial payments, the companies said Tuesday (May 23).
Together, the firms announced their plans at CoinDesk’s Consensus 2017 event, adding that the payment solution will use blockchain company Chain’s Chain Core platform.
Citi is already working with Chain, having launched CitiConnect for Blockchain, which aims to link Citi’s existing payments tools with blockchain infrastructure. With Nasdaq, the tool will provide an “end-to-end transactional process for private securities,” reports explained, offering companies a way to make global payments via CitiConnect for Blockchain and Nasdaq’s WorldLink payment solutions, offered via its Linq portal.
The technology will provide greater transparency into the payments process, the companies said.
Citi’s latest initiative in blockchain for commercial payments comes as the bank advised that corporate banking must take a “marathon, not sprint” approach to innovation and integration of new technologies like blockchain. Last year Citigroup released a report that suggested traditional FIs will always be necessary in the transaction process, and thus shouldn’t fear immediate disruption from blockchain, but they must understand it.
“Banks have served as trusted intermediaries,” explained Keith Horowitz, a co-author of the report, in an interview with PYMNTS last year. “The whole concept of blockchain could disintermediate the banks, so this is an important topic to understand.”
Nasdaq has similarly been increasing its activity in the world of blockchain. The company recorded its first blockchain-based transaction in 2015 and has been continuing to explore the technology ever since.
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