Standard Chartered announced the successful completion of the first cross-bank Letter of Credit (LC) transaction between Vietnam and Thailand conducted over blockchain, in partnership with Asian Development Bank (ADB), Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam and Standard Chartered Bank (Thai). The LC was for a $50,000 shipment transfer of plastics.
It also marks the successful completion of ADB’s first credit guarantee using distributed ledger technology, as well as the first of such LCs comprising a sell-down feature to be conducted on Contour network, a blockchain-based open industry platform focused on digitizing trade finance.
Compared to the paper-intensive and time-consuming processes involved in the traditional methods of trade finance, by digitizing the end to end exchange of information and streamlining the process of LC issuance and confirmation, all trade participants achieved a significant reduction in processing time from up to five days to within seven hours.