Brazilian bank Itaú joins R3 blockchain consortium

R3CEV, a blockchain alliance of global large banks, was established in September last year with 9 international bank members, and now has 44 members. After that , the alliance said it would expand its membership to include regional banks and traditional banks. Brazil's Itaú Bank is joining at this time and becoming the 45th member.

Translation: Annie_Xu

São Paulo-based Itaú Unibanco is the first bank in Latin America to join the R3CEV consortium, a blockchain and distributed ledger technology consortium.

R3CEV was founded in September last year with nine international banks as members, and Itaú now joins as the 45th member of the alliance, following South Korea's Hana Financial and Japan's SBI Holdings. According to Itaú's latest annual report, the bank made R$21.9 billion (Brazilian real = $6.1 billion) in profits in 2014 and managed assets of R$360 billion (US$101 billion).

Márcio Schettini, the bank’s general manager of technology and operations, said Itaú joined R3CEV to help advance the creation of distributed ledger solutions for corporate finance.

“We believe this technology will benefit customers and bring greater efficiencies to the industry as a whole.”

It is worth noting that Itaú is not the only bank that R3CEV provides services in Latin America. Santander and BBVA (Spanish Banco Bilbao) provide services to Argentina, Brazil and Mexico through authorization or branches; and in 2012, HSBC had 60 branches in Latin America.

Itaú joins as R3 expands its membership to include traditional banks, with many regional banks also joining the alliance.