Rural banks in the Philippines are taking the issue the improvement of financial inclusion for local residents seriously. They are hoping that by adopting Kaleido blockchain technology they will be able to reach their set goals.
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Kaleido blockchain and its impact
The latest initiative is dubbed Project i2i and is spearheaded by one of the country’s largest banking institutions called the Union Bank of the Philippines. Reports show that it will be using the Kaleido blockchain platform whose developer is ConsenSys, an ethereum startup.
One of the largest community banks in the Philippines, Cantilan, has been among the first ones to roll out the project. Some local banks are following suit as well.
The perspectives of the various experts in the industry
The chairman of UnionBank, Justo Ortiz, was the first official to reveal details regarding the project. It was during a conference conducted in New York where different viewpoints were given. It was all about the integration of rural banks with the biggest financial networks in the country and much of that would be done via the blockchain-powered retail payment platform.
The integration with the SWIFT network is pulling along with much complexity and that is why a huge deal of the financial services such as interbank transactions in the country’s rural areas still remains dependent on the paper-based processes.
The executive vice president of Cantilan, Tanya Hotchkiss, while addressing several journalists said that a normal interbank transaction could take almost a month to arrive. He added that the associated complexity was because there were almost 25 procedures, which are all done manually.
The founder of the Kaleido Blockchain Business Cloud platform, Steve Cerveny, said that customers usually encountered pitfalls as they channeled their money into various blockchain projects.
He outlined that this was the reason as to why they put together a team to build a reliable platform with the required set of tools. But can Kaleido be used to underwrite altcoins? So far, the matter remains unclear.
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