IBM announced a partnership with Stellar.org and KlickEx Group to help small businesses in underdeveloped countries participate in global trade; the partnership will focus on financial transactions across borders and currencies; this will allow businesses in these areas to get access to IBM’s scale and bank partnership network. Source.
The two firms have built the Yijian Blockchain Technology Application System; the platform seeks to increase transparency of pharmaceutical supply chain networks by tracking the flow of drugs, encrypting trading records and more easily authenticating transactions; overall it is expected to increase payments efficiency and reduce the payments timing for pharmaceutical retailers; the Yijian System is still in a pilot phase and expects to expand in July. Source
The Bank of Montreal, Caixabank, Erste Bank and Commerzbank join the Batavia blockchain project; the project was launched by UBS and IBM last year; Batavia looks to transform the trade finance industry; Marie Wieck, general manager of the blockchain team at IBM, tells the FT, “there is now a shift from technology projects to more of what I’d call ecosystem projects like this one.” Source.
The real time payments network Zelle has added new tech partners to their growing network; partners include ACI Worldwide, CGI, D3 Banking Technology and IBM; the new partners will help to accelerate technology, reduce risk and control costs for Zelle as their payments network grows over time. Source.
At IBM's InterConnect conference this week in Las Vegas the company discussed its plans for cloud, artificial intelligence and blockchain, three areas that it will be increasingly focusing on for the future; the IBM Cloud will be the base of the growth strategy with artificial intelligence and blockchain driving a full range of capabilities. Source
We often hear about all of the applications of blockchain technology in financial services, but there are very few solutions...
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·This week, we look at:
IBM spinning out its managed services division with $18 billion of revenue in order to focus on hybrid cloud and digital transformation
Reliance Jio, the Indian mobile telecom provider with 400 million users, contemplating financial services with backing from Google and Facebook
The role that technology infrastructure plays in the delivery of financial services
Business Insider takes a look at a growing trend in fintech as companies look to offer blockchain technology as a service; companies offering this already include Amazon AWS, IBM, Microsoft Azure and R3 Corda; this trend is seen as something that will only increase in the coming years as more adoption of this technology occurs in financial services and beyond. Source.
JPMorgan Chase and Barclays have joined IBM’s quantum computing network as they look to use the technology to assess risk and stay secure; Barclays is beginning to test potential uses and JPMorgan Chase is looking to leverage quantum computing for trading, portfolio optimization and risk analysis; there is a lot happening in quantum computing these days as big tech firms look to master the technology seen as potentially 100,000 times faster than classic computers; while there are clear benefits to quantum computing banks are also looking at protecting themselves from the cyber threat that hackers could exploit using the same technology. Source.
CoinDesk is releasing their 2020 version of the CoinDesk 50, the most innovative, consequential and viable projects in the blockchain...