BNP Paribas, the biggest French bank is now exploring the possibility of incorporating bitcoin and blockchain technology into its currency funds. This piece of news follows the recent reports of Societe Generale, another French bank hunting for bitcoin and blockchain technology expert to create blockchain based application prototypes.
READ MORE: Societe Generale Looks for Blockchain Experts to Drive Innovation
According to the reports, BNP Paribas is currently beta testing blockchain technology based application on of its currency funds. The banking giant is expected to make an announcement with regard to adoption of bitcoin technology into its operations. The reports were confirmed by the banks spokesperson who stated that BNP Paribas is exploring how blockchain technology can be used for post trade processes to make the process faster and more economical. The spokesperson went a bit further to make it clear that the projects are still in testing phase and it is not live.
The announcement by BNP Paribas doesn’t come as a surprise as it is high time all banks started incorporating blockchain technology into their everyday operations. This will help organizations provide faster and more economical services to their customers and also reduce infrastructure costs while ensuring compliance to existing regulations.
The recent report published by Santander group states that the banks can save anywhere between 15 to 20 billion dollars by year 2022 by adopting blockchain technology. The report states that bitcoin technology can drastically reduce the costs incurred by banks on cross border transactions and for setting up infrastructure to comply with regulatory and compliance requirements.
Recently Johann Palychata, an analyst with BNP Paribas had written about the potential of bitcoin and blockchain technology to change the way things happen in securities and trading industry. In the article featured in the company’s Quintessence magazine, Johann mentions that the industry in its current form maybe left redundant by blockchain technology. His analysis garnered a lot of attention and sparked few debates as well.