There FOUR trade finance blockchain groups bidding for your trade finance business which are not necessarily interoperable because the blockchain systems cannot necessarily communicate with each other directly:

• Batavia which uses the Hyperledger Fabric for its blockchain and IBM as the technology partner. It is aiming to cover open account trade finance and Letters of Credit. Banks involved include: UBS, Bank of Montreal, CaixaBank, Commerzbank and Erste Group
• Voltron which uses the R3 Corda technology platform and is aiming to digitise Letter of Credit. Banks involved include: Bangkok Bank, BBVA, BNP Paribas, HSBC, ING, Intesa, Natwest, Mizuho, Scotiabank, SEB, CTBC, and U.S. Bancorp.
• Marco Polo is a collaboration in which the technology partners are the R3 Corda platform and Trade IX which provides both payment solutions such as guarantees ands open account trade finance solutions such as receivable discounting and factoring. Banks involved include: Natwest, BNP Paribas, Commerzbank, ING, DNB, OP Financial, Bangkok Bank, SMBC, Standard Chartered Bank, and Natixis.
• We.trade platform which uses the Hyperledger Fabric for its blockchain and IBM as the technology partner. Banks involved include: Rabobank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Societé Generale, UniCredit, Nordea, and Santander. 

A more detailed review of these consortia and their differences is covered in Nicky Morris’s excellent article in Ledger Insights, see here.

The questions

For a corporate treasury department some of the key questions in trade finance now include:

• What block chain technology platform does it use?
• What platform do my corporate trading partners use?
• What platform(s) and in which consortia are my bank(s) on/in?

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CTMfile take: Is financing trade becoming more complicated or simpler? What has improved?