Natixis, the international corporate and investment banking arm of Groupe BPCE, the second-largest banking player in France, has announced that it has joined R3’s blockchain-based trade finance network Marco Polo which aims to provide a trade and supply chain finance platform built on distributed ledger technology.
Marco Polo is a joint undertaking with enterprise software firm R3, trade finance technology firm TradeIX and a network of the world’s largest financial institutions. By joining the network, Natixis is now grouped together with some of the leading banks in the world, including BNP Paribas, Commerzbank, ING, Standard Chartered Bank, Bangkok Bank, SMBC, DNB and OP Financial Group.
The Marco Polo initiative aims to provide a trade and supply chain finance platform built on an interoperable business network powered by open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and blockchain technology.
Anne-Cécile Delas, Global Head of Global Transaction Banking at Natixis, commented:
“We are delighted to become a member of the Marco Polo network and offer trade and supply chain finance solutions leveraging blockchain technology. This initiative belongs to Natixis’ continuous transformation plan, which is putting digital technology and innovation at the core of its strategy to improve the experience of its clients. We look forward to active collaboration with the other key members of the initiative and believe that there will be significant opportunity to synergistically drive the adoption of blockchain and new trade solutions in the trade finance market.”
David E. Rutter, Chief Executive Officer of R3, said:
“Blockchain’s potential to transform the trade finance ecosystem has always been clear. With the Marco Polo network on our Corda platform we are moving forward from potential to reality. We are pleased to welcome Natixis on board.”
Daniel Cotti, CFO and Bank Partner Relationships at TradeIX, added:
“We are very pleased that Natixis has joined the Marco Polo network. This should be a signal that there is broad agreement in this sector that crosses some significant strategic and organizational boundaries about collaboration, leveraging new technologies and to provide standards and best practices in the traditionally fragmented regional trade finance space.”
Marco Polo is based on R3’s Corda technology with a focus on open account trade finance orchestrations with data matching and is designed to be integrated in new and existing solutions and other trade networks. The initiative looks to add new bank members to the network in order to scale and be able to offer trade finance solutions to their corporate clients and the opportunity to distribute trade assets and data with other members.
