National Australia Bank wins first battle, completes $10 cross-border blockchain transfer in 10 seconds

澳大利亚国民银行(NAB), one of the four largest banks in Australia, has successfully completed its first proof of concept (PoC) using blockchain for fund transfers.

The banking industry’s blockchain research team continues to grow

The transfer used Ripple's ledger technology, and NAB successfully transferred 10澳元from the account of one of its employees to the account of another employee of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC).

National Australia Bank, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (one of the five largest banks in Canada) and Bank Leumi (the largest bank in Israel) have recently formed an international banking innovation alliance to share their respective innovation strategies and information, simplify banking operations and develop more new functions.

The processing and settlement time of this transfer took only 10秒钟. It is said that IBM also participated in this experiment, providing software support and cloud architecture for it.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Jonathan Davey, executive general manager of NAB, commented on blockchain technology:

We believe that this technology not only provides real-time cross-border payments, but also improves the security and efficiency of payment systems, which is a very important advantage.

The three members of the innovation alliance will share costs, test products in three different banking environments, and ultimately design and develop various products and services.

Blockchain Competition

Davey believes that banks currently have no choice but to research blockchain innovations, otherwise, the traditional banking structure will be uprooted by the emerging financial technology.

We live in a rapidly changing world. Every day, new financial technologies continue to challenge traditional authorities; we not only have to keep up with them, but also find the right way to surpass them.

The establishment of this innovative alliance makes it possible to popularize blockchain technology in the banking market, especially in Australia and Israel. Both National Australia Bank and Leumi Bank of Israel are well-known small and medium-sized enterprise banks in their respective countries, which means they have a lot of opportunities to use distributed ledger technology (DLT).

NAB is also a member of the R3 banking consortium, which is researching blockchain technology for the financial services industry.

In July this year, the blockchain platform developed by Ripple also witnessed another bank transaction. Canadian financial institution ATB Financial transferred 1,000 Canadian dollars to German bank ReiseBank AG in 20 seconds.