June 6: Standard Chartered Bank Nepal Ltd (SCBNL) in partnership with Contour, a digital trade finance network, arranged a Blockchain knowledge sharing session for Nepal Rastra Bank on June 2. 

Issuing a press statement, SCBNL said that the benefits of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), its use cases and how it can help trade finance by removing the inefficiencies of the current system were discussed during the programme.

According to the bank, Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) are transforming global trade into highly organised networks to help improve efficiency and reduce cost in trade financing. The use of DLT for trade transforms the letter of credit process by managing the entire end-to-end process in a collaborative workflow, giving buyers and sellers instant access and real time visibility of the transaction, all on one connected platform, added the bank.

The interactions were extremely fruitful and helped brainstorm the potential benefits of DLT for Nepal that could contribute to improve the country’s trade flow.

According to the statement, Contour was formed by leading trade banks and industry partners with global footprint across 50+ countries to solve longstanding inefficiencies in global trade. “Contour transforms trade finance products, such as letters of credit, using decentralised technology to bring together the world's banks, corporates and logistics partners, onto a common digital, trusted network, in real time,” reads the statement.

Joshua Kroeker, Chief Product Officer of Contour gave a technical overview of DLT and explained how Contour’s multi-bank platform leverages on Distributed Ledger Technology (R3 Corda) to transform the clients’ journeys for import and export L/C transactions. This was followed by a demo of Contour’s platform.

Anirban Ghosh Dastidar, CEO of Standard Chartered Bank Nepal Ltd (SCBNL) shared that Standard Chartered Bank is one of the leading banks in the world in implementing various use cases of Blockchain including Trade finance and expressed his pleasure in leading this initiative in Nepal. The event was followed by a networking session, added the bank.