Blockchain This Week: Mastercard Partners With R3 To Develop Cross-Border Payments And More

Be it voting, land registration, education, healthcare records and other public services, blockchain is the best fit and proven technology for egovernance services. The global blockchain government market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 91% from 2019 to 2025. According to the latest Blockchain Government Market Research Report Forecast, the global blockchain government market is predicted to reach +USD 7500 Mn by 2025.

In India, we have seen an increased awareness among various states as well as banks pertaining to blockchain. While states such as Kerala, Telangana, Maharashtra and Karnataka have been running proofs of concept to explore blockchain for egovernance, banks, through various consortia such as Bankchain and other have independently and actively explored and adopted blockchain for various applications.

Recently, Indian private sector bank YES Bank, in a first in Asia, had facilitated the issuance of a commercial paper (CP) of INR 100 Cr using blockchain technology for Vedanta Ltd, a natural resources conglomerate.

Speaking to a news daily, Akhil Handa, head, fintech & partnerships, mobile banking, Bank of Baroda said,

“We are aggressively working on some use cases around Trade Finance, Invoice Discounting, e-KYC etc., built over blockchain in Bank of Baroda. We are also the member of a few bank-led consortiums like BIC, Bankchain and Trade Connect, and are actively participating in exploring financial use cases around DLT.”

Handa spoke of interoperability, scalability and cost and efficiency as among few challenges that hinder blockchain’s wide adoption and has slowed down it.

What’s are the major developments in blockchain this week? Let’s take a look.

Signzy Partners With Primechain

Bengaluru-based fintech company Signzy has partnered with Pune-based blockchain startup Primechain Technologies to co-develop AI-led smart banking solutions for banks and financial institutions.

The companies said that their first pre-integrated solution is expected to be launched by December 2019. It aims to fast-track the digital transformation of banks and financial institutions in India and around the world.

The companies’ smart banking solution will integrate AI and blockchain technologies to automate and fully-digitise back-office operations. It will allow banks to achieve efficiencies in operations and simultaneously deliver a superior customer experience across a range of products: loans, insurance and retail banking services.

Mastercard Partners With R3 To Develop  Cross-Border Payments Solution

Payments giant Mastercard, a founding member of Facebook-led Libra project, has partnered with leading enterprise blockchain software provider R3 to develop and pilot a new blockchain-enabled cross-border payments solution. It will initially focus on connecting global faster payments infrastructures, schemes and banks supported by a clearing and settlement network operated by Mastercard.

Mastercard said it wants to deliver global payment infrastructure choice and connectivity as demonstrated through its recent strategic acquisitions and partnerships, including its relationship with R3.

Blockchain To Raise $50 Mn 

Backed by reputed investors including Lightspeed, Google and Richard Branson, London-based startup Blockchain is reportedly in talks with its existing and new investors to raise another VC fund worth $50 Mn.

According to reports, Sam Harrison, who joined Blockchain from Naspers Ventures in July 2018 is leading the talks in this regard. According to Harrison’s Linkedin profile update, he has co-founded Blockchain.com Ventures – $50m Venture Capital Fund – which has been invested in crypto startups like Origin Protocol, Coindirect, Sliver.tv, Nodle.

KR1 Expands Blockchain Portfolio With 3 New Investments

Founded in 2016, Europe’s digital asset investment company supporting early-stage decentralised and open-source blockchain projects KR1 has unveiled new investments in three blockchain-based technology firms.

The investment company has invested $154.6K in the Nym Protocol project, an open-source, decentralised network that allows developers to build applications that protect against the leakage of metadata, information which can include things such as contact information and the origin and destination of messages.

The company has also made additional investments in Nexus Mutual, a company attempting to create a mutual insurance platform using blockchain and, in Alice Si, a social funding platform attempting to use blockchain to better scale and allocate funds to social projects.