14 Indian Banks Join Blockchain Initiative for Improved Inter-bank Transactions

A young consortium of banks in India aims to use blockchain technology to tackle the grinding infrastructure problems that the country faces at this moment.

As a rising economic power, India is accelerating at break-neck speed towards new technologies and solutions to help overcome some of the shortfalls still found within its infrastructure.

For example, 14 banks that account for about half of the country’s trading volume have joined the India Trade Connect consortium, an endeavor that aims to develop a solution that facilitates loans on a blockchain. The solution is being developed by Infosys, a software company based in Bangalore.

“From the banks’ point of view, business will increase and transactions will happen in scale,” said Abhijit Singh, head of technology at ICICI Bank.

Many banks in India currently handle their transactions using older paper-heavy methods that require manual verification and are prone to human error. As a result, it could take as long as a month to settle a transaction between two different banks.

The project this consortium is engaging in should make these delays nearly disappear, moving the timeframe down to less than one day for a settlement, said Anup Purohit, CIO of Yes Bank, a member of the consortium.

“It’ll take three to four years before we fully exploit blockchain technology,” Purohit added.

It appears as if though India may become a testbed for many blockchain projects as the number of job offers in both cryptocurrency and blockchain-related industries have grown significantly in the country.

According to a report by Indeed, the number of jobs posted on the website in this particular field has exploded to about three times its original size and eclipses other software development endeavors in the country.

More than 10 percent of Bitcoin wallets are located in this subcontinent with a population of over one billion people.