The State Bank of India has announced the launch of two blockchain production-ready beta solutions in December 2017, ready for use to 27 major Indian banks of the "BankChain" consortium.
Government-owned State Bank of India (SBI) a banking corporation with assets over $460 billion at the time of writing, India's largest Consortium of banks, has a foothold in just about every financial services sector in the country. As a public sector bank, the State Bank of India took the lead to establish the first financial blockchain consortium called BankChain, where all participating banks and technology companies research, develop and implement blockchain applications in the fintech industry. State Bank of India, has a roster of 27 member banks among its ranks – from the public and private sector of finance – BankChain also sees the likes of Intel, IBM, and Microsoft as technology partners.
The consortium will test the use of its first blockchain applications with two beta rollouts for smart contracts, and a common know your customer (KYC) platform next month, according to SBI’s head of innovation Sudin Baraokar.
Sudin Baraokar stated:
By next month, we should have two beta production solutions ready for use by the 27 banks. We will also invite further participation. The beta production that will be prepared and smart contracts and the second is KYC.
Outlining use-cases for smart contracts, Baraokar pointed to "simple" processes like non-disclosure agreements that can be automated, as opposed to manually signing forms.
"A lot of internal processes can be [smart] contracted," Baraokar revealed. "We do a lot of IT procurement, a lot of it can be implemented using blockchain."
A blockchain-powered KYC solution is listed among 10 “active projects” of the BankChain slate. Other notable projects include virtual currencies, cross-border payments, and peer-to-peer payments. SBI’s KYC blockchain solution will run on Linux Foundation modular Hyperledger Sawtooth platform.
The collective effort between Indian banks to create blockchain solutions under a common roof is proclaimed by Baraokar as a “big move” for India’s banking sector.