Standard Chartered Invests More Money in Newly Rebranded Trade Finance Startup

Commonplace Chartered has invested an undisclosed sum into Contour, a Corda-based blockchain commerce platform, to streamline transaction settlement processes.

Contour, which rebranded from Voltron final week, just lately tapped R3’s Asia chief Carl Wegner as CEO within the run-up to a full industrial launch of its digitized letter-of-credit (LoC) service, which it claims lowered processing time for LoCs from two weeks to simply below a day in a number of pilot tasks. Commonplace Chartered International Head of Transaction Banking Lisa Robins mentioned Tuesday the corporate streamlined the commerce course of by chopping down on the quantity of paper wanted.

Letters of credit score are a bank-backed fee assure – transferable proof the vendor will get the cash owed. They’re an integral a part of cross-border commerce and but, in line with Contour, LoCs can take as much as 10 days to course of and settle.

Contour has monetary backing from Bain and Co., Bangkok Financial institution, BNP Paribas, HSBC, ING, SEB, R3, CryptoBLK and CTBC Enterprise Capital. A lot of these present companions had been a part of Contour’s LoC trials below the community’s earlier identify. 

“The chance value in commerce finance is big,” Carl Wegner mentioned in a latest firm weblog submit. “Trillions of {dollars} in commodities, services and products are transacted each day, however the sector continues to be characterised by gradual, duplicative and costly processes. Contour delivers a community the place trusted info is shared in actual time, successfully digitizing letters of credit score throughout all customers within the transaction.”

Institutional purchasers appeared to agree. In Could 2019, 96 % of members in an R3-run commerce trial of 50 banks and companies indicated Voltron might enhance their finance processing.

The newly branded firm will search to capitalize on that sentiment later this yr. Based on Wegner, the corporate is “now specializing in scaling the community with extra banks, corporates and companions, and sit up for persevering with to collaborate with our rising neighborhood.” 

GTR reported Contour will launch a industrial model of the product within the second half of 2020 and plans to construct out its technical employees within the interim.