HSBC executes payment via blockchain for Reliance

Mumbai, Nov. 4: In a first for India, banking major HSBC has executed a trade finance transaction involving an export by Reliance Industries to an American client using the blockchain, which massively reduced the time taken for processing the documents.

The blockchain-enabled letter of credit transaction facilitated a shipment between Reliance and the US-based Tricon Energy, a joint statement issued by HSBC India and RIL said.

“The use of blockchain offers significant potential to reduce the timelines involved in exchange of export documentation from the extant seven-ten days to less than a day,” RIL joint CFO Srikanth Venkatachari was quoted as saying in a statement.

The blockchain platform was integrated with the electronic bill of lading (eBL) platform to issue and manage an electronic bill of lading, it said, adding this allows a digital transfer of the title of goods from the seller to the buyer in the underlying trade.

The statement claimed that the solution is a significant improvement for any organisation involved in buying and selling goods internationally, as it brings together all parties onto one platform.

Blockchain solutions is a distributed database that maintains a continuously-growing list of ordered records called blocks and is deemed to be very transparent.