HSBC makes first overseas blockchain payment for RIL

In a first for India, British 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 USbased Tricon Energy, a joint statement issued by HSBC India and Reliance 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 said.

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.

Blckchain solutions is a distributed database that maintains a continuouslygrowing list of ordered records called blocks and is deemed to be very transparent as all the stakeholders can view progress real time.

A slew of domestic lenders, including ICICI Bank, SBI and Yes Bank among others are working on blockchain solutions and count trade finance as one of the best use cases for the technology because of the ability to cut down on time.