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EssDocs, a provider of cardless trading platforms, will launch a series of blockchain-based commercial solutions, after entering into a strategic partnership with Swisscom Blockchain.
Founded in 2015, essDocs already offers a range of non-blockchain solutions to digitize commercial and logistics finance documents, including the bill of lading. Swisscom Blockchain, meanwhile, is an advisory blockchain that helps companies design, build and implement generalized accounting applications. It was established last year.
In a statement, essDocs states that the two companies "will leverage their respective resources and expertise to enable companies to digitize their commercial and commercial processes quickly, efficiently and with minimal impact."
The parties have already started testing their first collaborative product, which will be officially launched in the first quarter of 2019.
Alexander Goulandris, CEO of essDocs, says companies will offer "high-value blockchain solutions" such as traceability, cross-platform connectivity and solution data distribution.
"Our joint solutions will focus primarily on transition technology, bridging data gaps, paper processes and technology silos with the ultimate goal of a secure and automated digital commerce," he says.
Also commenting on the partnership, Daniel Haudenschild, CEO of Swisscom Blockchain, suggests that blockchain technology will enable them to address the challenge of mass adoption that digitalization efforts in the commerce industry have historically faced.
"Along the way, both our companies will support a customer-centric approach to unlock the true potential that blockchain and digitalization must offer to the trade, commercial finance and logistics community," he adds.
The partnership marks the official launch of essDocs in the blockchain, a technology widely explored by other technology companies in commercial finance and banking consortia. Bolero, its much older competitor founded in 1998, has worked with the blockchain R3 company for more than a year its electronic bill of lading service is a blockchain upgrade. This has evolved in Bolero taking part in several pilots of the Voltron platform, a blockchain project managed by R3 and eight global banks to facilitate the exchange of documentation on commercial finance.
For example, in November, Bolero's electronic bill of lading solution was used in a Voltron-based commercial transaction HSBC, ING, Reliance Industries and Tricon Energy. The integration allowed the digital transfer of the goods title on the blockchain.
At the time, EssDocs was mentioned as another electronic document provider that could be incorporated with the Voltron platform.
Chris Sunderman, head of the blockchain initiative for ING's commercial finance services, said GTR: "When you look at the commercial ecosystem, the world is big and companies do not work by themselves with a supplier of electronic documents, there are also companies like essDocs and eTitle, so in the Voltron project , the banks have agreed to investigate and analyze the application of other solutions.We need to incorporate other solutions to make our customers' lives as simple as possible. "He also confirmed that the consortium is currently under discussion with essDocs, who is interested in working with them.
Bolero and essDocs' moves to build blockchain solutions come as competition in this space is overheating, with a number of other companies and technology consortiums seeing commercial documentation as an obvious home for new technology. The nature of the blockchain, being a decentralized technology, makes it ideal for the commercial industry, as it allows multiple parties to exchange information in real time, while being able to monitor and transfer resources securely.
One of the first companies to make news for its blockchain-based commercial solution is the Israeli startup Wave. In 2016, he completed what became known as the first live blockchain commercial transaction in the world with Barclays and is now working for the release of a commercial bill of lading solution.
This was followed by the founding of Slovenia blockchain company CargoXwhich raised over $ 7 million in an ICO at the end of January. Last month, the company announced that its blockchain-based bill of lading platform is now commercially available, having spent the second half of 2018 leading drivers with a number of logistic service providers.
Meanwhile, Maersk is working with IBM to build and expand TradeLens, a blockchain platform that allows users in the shipping ecosystem to interact efficiently, access shipping data in real time, and digitize and exchange business documentation. Already more than 92 organizations participate in the program for early adoption of the platform.
And more recently, some of the most important container lines and terminal operators in the world have formed a consortium, Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN), always with the same objective: to develop a new blockchain-based platform for the global trade ecosystem.
