Contour, a Singapore blockchain-based trade finance platform, has announced that Standard Bank South Africa has joined the Contour beta network. Standard Bank South Africa is the first bank in Africa to join the Contour beta network.
Contour is built on R3’s Corda platform, and is led by CEO, Carl Wegner, who was the previous managing director at R3. Contour uses the R3 Corda enterprise blockchain for its digital Letter of Credit network.
We’re proud to announce that Standard Bank has joined our #network. As our list of partners grow, we’re able to bring the benefits of #TradeDigitisation to even more banks and corporates.
Read the full story here: https://t.co/EYYoFNulQG pic.twitter.com/fdr18FPirp
— Contour (@contourtrade) September 22, 2020
Traditional Letters of Credit are too reliant on paperwork, and require a significant amount of documentation. Contour argues that the world is adapting to social distancing and remote working in a post-lockdown world, and claims that the use of paper-based processes will become increasingly problematic for economies.
Contour claim that by using the Contour network, Standard Bank will benefit from improved processing times by up to 90%.
Standard Bank is set to benefit from direct connectivity with other blockchain and traditional partner networks. Contour’s other partners include Tradecloud, Chinsay, Bolero and CryptoBLK.
Kevin Holmes, Head of Trade Product Management at Standard Bank said:
“Joining Contour has allowed us to expand our offering in collaboration with International Financial Institutions to corporates across the region harnessing Contour’s technology to provide our clients with an enhanced user experience. Being part of the beta opens up our connections with Contour’s other participants, giving us greater access to the opportunities to manage our trade finance business.”
Feature image by Launchpresso from flickr
