Thailand’s Kasikornbank teams up with IBM to develop blockchain network

Rage Comment : Kasikornbank, the fourth largest bank in Thailand by assets, has developed blockchain services with local IBM, and is expected to start the service in the first half of 2017, aiming to remove middlemen, reduce costs and speed up the transaction process. All signs indicate that 2017 will be a year when blockchain technology will be widely used, bringing a lot of convenience to our lives.

Translation: Nicole

Thailand's Kasikornbank Pcl has teamed up with International Business Machines Corp (IBM) in Thailand to develop blockchain services aimed at reducing costs and speeding up transaction processes, the company said on Thursday.

Kasikornbank will be the first Thai bank to apply blockchain technology and aims to start the service in the first half of 2017, Somkid Jiranuntarat, vice chairman of Kasikornbank's technology group, told reporters.

Kasikornbank is also in talks with other Thai banks to share a blockchain network, he said.

Blockchain is a web-based transaction processing and settlement system whose efficiencies banks say can cut costs. The system can create a "golden record" of any given set of data, automatically replicating that data to all parties in a secure network and without the need for any third party to verify it.

Financial services firms around the world have been focusing on developing blockchain technology, which advocates say could save billions of dollars in costs and speed up transaction times.

According to the joint statement, the technology will verify the origin of documents by using IBM’s Hyperledger infrastructure. In the initial stage, a system called OriginCert API will be used to verify letters of guarantee (LG), which will help regulate and speed up the LG issuance process for consumers.

Kasikornbank, Thailand's fourth-largest lender by assets and a leader in digital banking with a market share of nearly 40%, said in April it aims to invest 5 billion baht ($143 million) in information technology development.