China Foreign Exchange Trade System joins R3 blockchain alliance to build public standards for financial markets

The Financial Innovation Alliance R3 recently announced the arrival of a new member,中国外汇交易中心(CFETS). The Foreign Exchange Trade System is a national interbank lending center (hereinafter referred to as the Trading Center), which is a public institution directly under the People's Bank of China. The addition of the Trading Center is expected to bring distributed and shared ledger technology innovations to the global financial market.

The Foreign Exchange Trading Center is headquartered in Shanghai. Its functions include providing inter-bank foreign exchange trading, RMB interbank lending, and bond trading systems and organizing market transactions; handling fund clearing and delivery of foreign exchange transactions, providing clearing reminder services for RMB interbank lending and bond trading; providing an online bill quotation system; and providing information services on the foreign exchange market, bond market, and money market.

By joining the R3 consortium, the FX trading center will work with major global financial institutions to leverage the advantages of distributed and shared ledgers to bring groundbreaking business use cases to the financial services industry. The R3 consortium members are currently working on the development of the shared ledger platform Corda . The platform is used to record, manage and synchronize financial agreements between institutions, mainly selecting the more suitable elements of the blockchain system and discarding those that are not suitable for banking applications.

Commenting on the addition of the FX trading center, David Rutter, CEO of R3 Alliance, said:

We are delighted to welcome the China Foreign Exchange Trade System as a new member of the R3 consortium. Today, we have to recognize the important role of the RMB in international transactions and China's influence in global financial markets. Their expertise is a great asset to help us develop standardized use cases for distributed ledger technology in increasingly global financial markets.

Xu Zaiyue, Vice President of China Foreign Exchange Trading Center, added:

The Foreign Exchange Trading Center is committed to promoting the development of China's interbank lending market and establishing technical standards. We realize that blockchain, as an emerging technology, can reshape the entire market. After cooperating with R3, we hope to work with international peers to establish a blockchain application architecture and platform for the financial market.

The China Foreign Exchange Trade System will also be integrated into R3’s scientific research environment and join R3’s laboratories and research centers.