Swiss financial infrastructure firm tests blockchain technology's potential with digital assets

Rage Review : SIX Securities Services, one of the backbone forces of Swiss financial infrastructure, has partnered with blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings to build a proof-of-concept mechanism for securities market infrastructure. The company will participate in the Sibos conference in Geneva, Switzerland at the end of this month (the iconic annual international conference for the financial services industry organized by SWIFT) to showcase early distributed ledger prototypes. This will be an important sign of Switzerland's expansion of blockchain research and development.

Translation: Annie_Xu

SIX Securities Services, a large Swiss infrastructure provider, has partnered with blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings to build a proof of concept for securities market infrastructure.

The two companies are jointly charting the development path of blockchain technology throughout the securities lifecycle.

Thomas Zeeb

Thomas Zeeb, the division’s CEO, said distributed ledger technology is important to SIX Securities’ post-trade processes.

“We need to understand it, especially its application potential and future flexibility, to stay at the forefront. Partnering with Digital Asset Holdings can leverage their experience in this field and accelerate development plans.”

The project aims to demonstrate how to add a simple and straightforward distributed cryptographic processing flow to existing securities processes. Once the blueprint is complete, the company plans to develop a production-ready service.

SIX Securities is one of the backbones of Swiss financial infrastructure, providing stock trading and post-trade settlement services.

The annual report shows that last year SIX Securities executed 409 million clearing transactions and 31 million clearing transactions for a total of 3.1 trillion Swiss francs ($3.17 trillion). The total profit for the period was $43 million.

In 2008, SWX Group, Telecurse Group and SIX Group merged to form SIX Securities, which provides trading services, financial data, and card payment processing services in Switzerland, Austria and Luxembourg.

The company will demonstrate its early distributed ledger prototype later this month at Sibos in Geneva, Switzerland, the flagship annual international conference for the financial services industry organized by SWIFT.