Australian equity transfer service company and blockchain startup cooperate to build equity registration system

Rage Comment : After major Australian stock exchanges have begun exploring blockchain applications, the latest news in the country's blockchain field is that Australian equity transfer service company Computershare has cooperated with British blockchain startup Setl to build an equity registration system based on blockchain technology. Computershare CEO Stuart Irving pointed out that those who question the positive significance of blockchain are out of touch with the world. The chairman of Setl, which is responsible for the software support of the system, has served as a senior executive of Barclays, Morgan Stanley and the Bank of England.

Translation: Annie_Xu

Australian equity transfer service company Computershare has partnered with a British blockchain startup to build a share registration system based on blockchain technology.

The cooperation plan is to use Setl's technical foundation to complete the transfer of ownership between securities buyers and sellers; Computershare's task is to attract customers and users after the platform is built.

The two companies announced the partnership at an investor conference in Sydney, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. The initial project of the collaboration is the application of the Australian securities market, which obviously attracted a lot of attention because the major Australian stock exchanges have already started exploring distributed ledgers.

Stuart Irving

Computershare CEO Stuart Irving said at an investor conference that many technology supporters believe that blockchain can improve or even directly replace many aspects of the securities industry, and it has positive significance for the company's development.

“We believe that comments that blockchain ‘will harm Computershare’ are ill-informed and reflect a lack of analytical scrutiny or competing vested interests. Our focus should be on payments and settlements, not registries. The idea that ‘distributed ledger’ technology means everyone will have access to a copy of the share registry is naive.”

According to the cooperation agreement, Setl is responsible for providing software support for equity registration; while Computershare is responsible for lobbying shareholders to join the system.

Last year, Setl made headlines when it announced that a former Bank of England executive would become its chairman. David Walker, who joined Setl in mid-December, was a former Barclays and Morgan Stanley executive.