Standard Chartered launches blockchain trade platform with China’s
Standard Chartered, a United Kingdom-based multinational firm, has recently launched a trading platform backed by blockchain technology as a joint venture with Linklogis, a Chinese supply chain fintech provider.
The platform, dubbed as Olea, will assist institutional investors that are on the lookout for opportunities in an alternative asset class with business needs of supply chain financing.
According to reports, Olea would be headquartered in Singapore, where Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures CEO, Ng, will be the Principal while Linklogis’s Letitia Chau will be the Deputy CEO.
A year after the two companies signed a memorandum of understanding for jointly exploring and developing supply chain finance solutions, Standard Chartered became the official global bank investor of Linklogis in the year 2020. The UK bank has previously worked with Chinese-based fintech companies, including Alipay and Trusple, which were used by DBS Bank, Citi, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and various others.
Olea is reportedly helping Standard Chartered build its global digital trade profile in order to align its banking resources with blockchain infrastructure, hence continuing engagement with the technology. Other multinational banks tapping on blockchain include BNP Paribas, HSBC and Citi, who had their joint platform ready for launch in Singapore during the second quarter of 2020.
In fact, Standard Chartered itself has partnered with many of these banks for trade finance using the Hong Kong-based eTrade Connect blockchain platform in 2018. In the same year, digital finance platform We.trade had collaborated with Hyperledger Fabric-backed IBM blockchain for its first live operations, using HSBC, UniCredit, Deutsche Bank, Santander, Rabobank and Societe Generale as its founder banks.
