CaixaBank, one of the first European banks to assess blockchain‘s potential for financial services and holder of the largest base of digital customers in Spain (6.3 million), has added the digital trade platform we.trade to its service catalog for companies.The announcement is a milestone for CaixaBank as the firm becomes one of the first European bank to grant its customers access to blockchain technology, with the goal of helping them to internationalize their business.
We.trade was developed by a consortium comprising 15 European financial institutions and offers speed, simplicity, and security for all parties in foreign trade transactions. With this digital trade platform, importers and exporters can conduct their trading operations in a digital format with access to real-time monitoring of transactions. The platform can only be accessed by customers who are verified and authenticated by the member banks, which adds higher security and trust to the transactions.
Europe’s first blockchain-technology-based foreign-trade platform is designed to increase the security and traceability of national and international trading transactions. we.trade prevents any default risk for companies as it generates smart contracts that link the trading operation with the financing or payment, and with the fulfillment of the trading conditions.
CaixaBank is listed in the Bolsa de Madrid and is part of the IBEX 35. It holds a 100% stake in Banco Português de Investimentos (BPI), which is listed in Euronext Lisbon’s PSI-20 stock index.
In October 2019, the bank launched an innovation project using artificial intelligence to manage returned direct debit payments. As a leading Spanish retail bank, CaixaBank manages 450 million direct debit payments every year and is the primary direct debit service provider in Spain.
In May, CaixaBank started to deploy the new system as a pilot project in 600 branches all over Spain (including the entire Barcelona network plus selected branches nationwide). In the first four months of operation, the artificial intelligence technology has already resolved a high percentage of cases by itself. If the model were to be expanded to the entire CaixaBank network, it would save approximately 82,000 hours of work, according to the bank
