Ant Group, parent company of China’s largest mobile payments business Alipay, has launched Trusple, a blockchain-based trade processing platform for SMEs and banks.
Trusple, which is an amalgamation of “trust made simple”, is based on AntChain, a blockchain-based technology platform.
In a separate announcement, DBS Bank said it is the first Asian bank partner on Trusple. There are four other member banks, BNP Paribas, Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered.
“This partnership speaks to our accelerated deployment of market-leading digital and data-based financing capabilities to ensure steady financing to SMEs,” says Tan Su Shan, DBS’ group head of institutional banking.
“Our collaboration with Ant will enable the use of data to provide greater transparency into complex, fast-moving supply chains. We can then leverage this data to deliver quicker and more cost-efficient financing to counterparties on the Trusple platform,” she adds.
Guofei Jiang, Ant Group vice president and president of intelligent technology business group, says that AntChain’s goal is to build transparency and strengthen trust in trade ecosystems that involve large numbers of participants and complex processes.
“We have therefore been accelerating blockchain-enabled industry transformations, working with our partners to make blockchain technology more accessible for users, as well as creating tangible value for SMEs, consumers and clients across a spectrum of industries,” he adds.
Cross border trade has very much been a complex and paper-based process.
By digitising the process across the whole chain, involving multiple parties ranging from sellers to financiers to logistics providers to buyers, Trusple is meant to help make the process more efficient and secure for all.
There are existing blockchain based digital trade processing systems. DBS, for example, is also a member of another platform called Contour. Since May, it has successfully completed four transactions on the blockchain platform.
