Natixis is now part of a growing number of leading banks such as BNP Paribas, Commerzbank, ING, Standard Chartered Bank, Bangkok Bank, SMBC, DNB and OP Financial Group that are part of the Marco Polo initiative to provide a trade and supply chain finance platform world-wide. Marco Polo is one of the fastest growing trade finance business networks and is a joint undertaking with enterprise software firm R3, trade finance technology firm TradeIX and a network of the world’s largest financial institutions. 

Marco Polo technology

The Marco Polo initiative uses the TradeIX platform which is built on an interoperable business network powered by open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and R3’s Corda blockchain technology. In 2017 they implemented the first blockchain-enabled trade finance transaction with financing provided by Standard Chartered plc and credit risk mitigation from global insurer AIG, see figure below:

Source & Copyright©2018 - TradeIX

Marco Polo initiative

The infrastructure provided by Marco Polo supports open account trade finance orchestrations with data matching, designed to be integrated in new and existing solutions and other trade networks.

The principal focus of the Marco Polo initiative today is adding new bank members, offering trade finance solutions to their corporate clients and the opportunity to distribute trade assets and data with other members.

Global trade veteran Daniel Cotti, CFO and Bank Partner Relationships at TradeIX, said, “We are very pleased that Natixis has joined the Marco Polo network. This should be a signal that there is broad agreement in this sector that crosses some significant strategic and organizational boundaries about collaboration, leveraging new technologies and to provide standards and best practices in the traditionally fragmented regional trade finance space.” 

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CTMfile take: Blockchains and APIs are really starting to deliver in global trade solutions. The only question is how many banks and global insurers will join this initiative, and how many will join the other new technology based initiatives that are starting to emerge.