A partnership with blockchain company Coinfirm was announced by Polish bank PKO Polski on 29 March.
PKO has embraced Coinfirm’s Trudatum tool in order to provide its customers with a secure means to access documents containing information regarding regulations, transactions, fees and commissions. This would eliminate the need for paper documentation and represent a major boost to the bank’s financial budget, reducing costs to servicing its nine million customers.
Banks in Poland are becoming increasingly interested in adopting the new technology in order to deliver a more efficient, secure and cost-efficient system for customers as current methods are proving to be susceptible to problems such as removal of data and modification.
President of Polish fintech company MC2 Solutions, Anna Strezynska, indicates that the Polish Bank Association is currently looking at different ways of alleviating these issues within Polish banking systems and consequently investigating alternative solutions including blockchain technology.
PKO vice president Adam Marcinak indicated that the Trudatum system had been tested by the bank since last year to great success. Following the tests, the bank has decided to opt for further cooperation with the platform. He sees the future as very positive and believes that PKO will “be able to carry out a pioneering operation of implementing blockchain technology into the Polish banking sector”.
New technology and the banking system
Worldwide, barely a day goes by without the announcement of another major bank either testing or trialling the new technology. Combining shared databases and cryptography, blockchain technology allows multiple parties to have simultaneous access to a constantly updated digital ledger that cannot be altered. Some financial institutions see the potential of these attributes as irresistible.
A fast, low-cost, cross-border wiring service using blockchain is being considered this year between Japanese BTMU and Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank of Scotland, Australia’s Westpac and other international banks in order to improve existing systems.
The Bank of England indicated last week that is also testing blockchain possibilities to enhance its Real Time Gross Settlement Service (RTGS) through using distributed ledger technology.
