YES Bank jumps on blockchain bandwagon in India

Joining the growing number of Indian banks jumping onto the blockchain bandwagon, India’s fifth largest private sector bank YES Bank today said that they have implemented a multi-nodal blockchain transaction to fully digitise vendor financing for consumer electrical equipments manufacturing firm Bajaj Electricals. The bank informs that the implementation has been done on a blockchain-based smart contract written by fintech start-up Cateina Technologies.
Earlier in October 2016, India’s largest private sector bank by consolidated assets, ICICI Bank, had successfully executed transactions in international trade finance and remittance using blockchain technology in partnership with Emirates NBD. Two more private banks – Axis Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank were reported to be conducting pilot transactions using blockchain technology.
YES BANK said that it has used the Hyperledger Fabric supported by IBM to design a vendor financing solution which allows Bajaj Electricals to digitise the process for discounting and disbursal of funds to its vendors by integrating with YES BANK’s systems.
Going forward, YES BANK will also leverage IBM Watson Conversation, a cloud-based cognitive service, to enhance the digital experience of partners, corporate clients and developers collaborating with them on the integrated blockchain – API Banking platform.
This implementation has reduced entire process cycle for bill discounting from four days to almost real-time and has eliminated paper trail and manual intervention, said the bank.
Since inception, YES BANK has used technology and innovation, as mission critical pillars, to offer a superior banking experience to its corporate and retail customers. Our blockchain implementation is a continuation of this philosophy to offer revolutionary banking technology to our clients,” said Rana Kapoor, MD & CEO, YES BANK.
“I strongly believe that we are only at the tip of the iceberg,and envision that blockchain coupled with IBM’s Cognitive solution on Cloud platform will make a significant impact in the global Transaction Banking space by ensuring that the Financial Supply Chain is more robust, secure, seamlessly connected and provides a great customer experience,” he added.
Agreeing with Kapoor, Vanitha Narayanan, managing director, IBM India said, “Cognitive systems that understand, reason and learn, in combination with blockchain networks and delivered on Cloud can transform operations, compliance and engagement, delivering truly individualised and secure client experiences.’’
”This solution enables us to do timely processing of the vendor payment through vendor financing from the bank without physical documents and manual intervention. It also enables us and our vendor to track the status of the transactions on real time basis,” Shekhar Bajaj, CMD, Bajaj Electricals.
YES BANK said, “It has put in place a detailed roadmap on commercialising blockchain based banking solutions in India and is exploring use cases for implementation towards ‘Letter of Credit’ and Documentary Collections, Foreign Remittances and Partnering with Correspondent Banks for Trade Finance among others.”