China Merchants Bank become second Chinese firm to join R3 distributed ledger consortium

The R3 distributed ledger consortium has announced that Chinese banking giant China Merchants Bank Co. Ltd (SHA:600036) has become the latest member to join R3.

China Merchants Bank, or CMB, becomes the second major China-based group to join R3. We had earlier reported that Ping An Financial Services Group had become an R3 member back in May.

The R3 partnership is a consortium comprised of 60 of the world’s largest financial institutions, focused on designing and applying distributed and shared ledger-inspired technologies for global financial markets.

CMB, headquartered in Shenzhen and one of the 10 largest banking groups in mainland China, will collaborate to develop ground-breaking commercial applications based on DLT for use across the industry, with a particular focus on the unique needs of the Chinese market.

The R3 team of financial industry veterans, technologists and blockchain and cryptocurrency experts collaborate with consortium members on research, experimentation, design and engineering to help advance this technology to meet banking requirements for identity, privacy, security, scalability, interoperability and integration with legacy systems.

Consortium members work closely with R3 to develop Corda, its shared ledger platform specifically designed to record, manage and synchronise financial agreements between regulated financial institutions. It is heavily inspired by and captures the benefits of blockchain systems, without the design choices that make blockchains inappropriate for many banking scenarios.

Tianhong Zhou, General Manager of IT Department at CMB, commented:

It is a great pleasure for us to reach an agreement with R3. As a technologically advanced bank, China Merchants Bank has always actively explored new technologies and applied them in our businesses. Blockchain holds great potential for the banking industry, and we look forward to working together with R3 to deliver the innovation required to improve a range of financial services and processes.

David Rutter, CEO of R3, commented:

We are delighted to establish a footprint in mainland China and welcome CMB to our rapidly growing consortium. The power of this technology lies in its potential to join institutions across borders and create an efficient and effective infrastructure that is appropriate for today’s increasingly globalised financial markets. We look forward to further growing our network in China over the coming months.

CMB joins the global network of R3 partners united in its lab environment, the R3 Lab and Research Centre, which has quickly become a center of gravity for collaborative research and testing of distributed and shared-ledger inspired technologies.

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