Survey shows that 90% of large North American and European banks are involved in blockchain projects

Baozou Comment : Management consulting firm Accenture released a bank blockchain survey report, surveying large banking institutions in North America and Europe, and concluded that 90% of them have entered the blockchain field, which shows its popularity. However, the survey also shows that many banks do not have the most basic knowledge of blockchain technology, so in this wave of enthusiasm, they first need to actively learn, and at the same time, together with other non-financial institutions, explore the standards of the industry to lay a solid foundation for the popularization of blockchain.

Translation: Annie_Xu

Management consulting firm Accenture released its latest survey results, indicating that 90% of large North American and European banks are involved in research on blockchain payment applications.

The report, titled "Blockchain Technology: How Banks Are Building a Real-Time Global Payment Network," draws on the opinions of 32 senior commercial banking experts, focusing on the potential of blockchain to transform the payments sector. Executives participating in the survey came from 11 of the top 20 banking institutions by assets in Canada, Europe and the Americas.

30% of the large banks surveyed have already started proof-of-concept development or deployment of distributed ledger solutions in the payment field; 13% have begun to deploy blockchain products; and 17% of banks are at the "forefront of change"; therefore, the report believes that these solutions have begun to be implemented.

Although the banking industry has been swept by the blockchain craze since 2015, many banks have been confused by the blockchain hype.

An American bank executive revealed that he had been confused by the craze and is only now beginning to learn about it.

A Canadian bank executive also said, "We don't even have enough knowledge to make a choice," pointing out that banks are still stuck in a cognitive blind spot.

Another Canadian bank executive, following a study of blockchain use cases, noted that the innovation would not be applicable to any payment transactions.

“We don’t want to replace all transaction processes, so we are just developing proofs of concepts and use cases to demonstrate the value of blockchain.”

Banks at the center of blockchain boom

The most common blockchain application explored by banks is cross-border transfers between banks.

Almost half of the banking institutions are conducting such R&D activities; the second largest use case is cross-border remittances. In the personal transfer business, commercial bank end users use their payment services, which has become the fifth largest direction of bank blockchain development.

At the same time, banks believe that reducing transaction friction and management costs is the biggest benefit of distributed ledger technology. The second is to reduce the probability of errors, speed up settlement, increase efficiency and revenue. For example, real-time data transmission and synchronization can create new financial services. In addition, private chain projects deployed by banks and regulators can collect data and bring profits.

Blockchain is everywhere

Most executives surveyed agreed that whatever approach banks take, the network must not become a "club for the few."

Bank executives pointed out that there are already blockchain payment solutions that accommodate non-bank institutions, including Internet finance and technology companies such as Google and Apple. In other words, all companies or participants in the supply chain.

A Canadian bank executive said:

"From the perspective of payment services, accessibility is the most important thing. The service must be available anywhere and at any time. Interbank payments are meaningless."

This common expectation is an important reason for reshaping the banking infrastructure with blockchain technology.

And the industry’s most high-profile blockchain collaborations will be open source. For example, although R3 is an independent alliance of the world’s largest banks, the distributed ledger software they jointly developed, Corda, will be used in the Hyperledger project.

Not long ago, IBM and conducted a banking industry survey to summarize blockchain activities in the industry.

“Our survey of commercial and retail banks shows that the entire industry is keen on blockchain applications, which is higher than originally expected.”

The survey included 200 banks, 15% of which said they would deploy blockchain solutions in 2017.

After the blockchain development boom, technology standardization is the next focus of the industry.