HSBC says it has settled more than US$250 billion in transactions using distributed ledger technology (DLT).

The bank has been at the forefront of trialling digitised letter of credit (L/C) transactions.

HSBC says in press release that it settled three million foreign exchange (FX) transactions and made a further 150,000 payments using its HSBC FX Everywhere platform.

Commercial FX imminent

The bank says it has been using this platform internally for the last year "to orchestrate payments across HSBC's internal balance sheets" and now appears ready to roll out it out to customers.

"Following successful implementation inside the bank, we are now exploring how this technology could help multinational clients - who also have multiple treasury centres and cross-border supply chains - better manage foreign exchange flows within their organisations," according to HSBC's interim global head, FX and commodities, Richard Bibbey.

L/C focus

In November 2018, BNP Paribas and HSBC completed Singapore's first fully digitised end-to-end L/C transaction between two different companies.

The deal involved Rio Tinto selling a bulk shipment of iron ore originating in Australia to China to its trading customer Cargill (DC World News, 23 November 2018).

This article represents the views of the author and not necessarily those of the ICC or Coastline Solutions.