DBS Bank has announced that it is the first Asian bank partner on AntChain’s newly-launched blockchain trade platform, Trusple.
The one-stop trade platform aims to facilitate greater acceptance and adoption of digital trade processes among corporates, especially small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) which face many pain-points when it comes to international cross border trade.
The other banks in the collaboration include Citibank and BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered and Deutsche Bank are also represented on the list.
Tan Su Shan, Group Head of Institutional Banking, DBS Bank, said that DBS’ partnership with AntChain underscores its commitment to SMEs in providing optimal and timely working capital support which is key to their survival in this period of prolonged trade disruptions.
“DBS is excited to be the first Asian bank to partner with AntChain. This partnership speaks to our accelerated deployment of market-leading digital and data-based financing capabilities to ensure steady financing to SMEs. Our collaboration with Ant will enable the use of data to provide greater transparency into complex, fast-moving supply chains. We can then leverage this data to deliver quicker and more cost-efficient financing to counterparties on the Trusple platform.”
Guofei Jiang, Ant Group Vice President and President of the Intelligent Technology Business Group, said, “At AntChain, we aim to build transparency and strengthen trust in trade ecosystems that involve large numbers of participants and complex processes. We have therefore been accelerating blockchain-enabled industry transformations, working with our partners to make blockchain technology more accessible for users, as well as creating tangible value for SMEs, consumers and clients across a spectrum of industries. We remain committed to the mission of Ant Group to make it easy for companies to do business anywhere across the world.
We are privileged to launch the Trusple platform with DBS and other international partners to help SMEs participate in international trade more conveniently and efficiently. At the same time, we welcome domestic and overseas partners to join the Trusple ecosystem and jointly build a digital trading network to serve SMEs around the world.”
On the Trusple platform, when a digital trade order is generated by a buyer or seller, it will be automatically recorded on the blockchain. This helps enhance transparency in complex supply chains, fostering greater trust between parties which may not have transacted with each other before.
As an added safeguard, DBS, along with other member banks, will also offer payment guarantees for all goods traded on the platform, whereby the financing bank will automatically dispatch payment to the seller once the buyer digitally acknowledges the receipt of goods on Trusple. This mitigates the risk of late payments and allows suppliers to enjoy greater predictability of cash flows, enabling them to better optimise their working capital for strategic opportunities to grow their business.
Additionally, member banks can also harness insights from the transactional data between buyers and suppliers to determine the credit quality of the business and offer competitively-priced trade loans through the platform. For instance, through Trusple, DBS is able to facilitate applications for trade financing in real-time and offer credit lines in less than 24 hours.
