Trade Finance Blockchain Marco Polo Pilots First Russia-Germany Transactions

Marco Polo, the trade finance blockchain with more than 20 global banks on board, is piloting its first trading arrangement between Germany and Russia.

Marco Polo, a joint undertaking between technology firms TradeIX and R3, has a grand vision of global blockchain-based trade finance replacing paper and trust with shared, instant digital verification.

"We launched our first distributed ledger technology in trade finance as early as 2017. Since then, corporate blockchain solutions have been considerably elaborated, and earned our clients' confidence and proved their applicability to real business processes," said Dina Merkulova, head of trade finance at Alfa-Bank.

In contrast to the live and kicking European SME-focused trade finance blockchain we.

Trade, Marco Polo is taking a measured and methodical journey to production.

Previously, the 22-bank blockchain consortium added the capability for a third party in a trade to trigger a payment to a supplier at the moment goods are shipped.

"Our international corporates show continuous interest in piloting the Marco Polo Payment Commitment together with us and banks of our global network, like Alfa-Bank. Marco Polo network, meets our customers' growing demand for increased speed of transaction and transparency, optimized financing, enhanced working capital management and possible integration of ERP systems."

At the recent Sibos conference in London, representatives from Marco Polo and we.

"In global trade, we are used to collaborating."

Trade; Agnes Joly, head of trade service at SocGen; Daniel Cotti, managing director, Marco Polo/TradeIX; Mira Skrzypczak, head of working capital products, RBS; Alisa DiCaprio, head of research and global trade strategy, R3. Image from Sibos 2019 in London via Ian Allison for CoinDesk.