Thai Bank finds Solution for cross-border Payments using Blockchain

By Raghav Sawhney

Kasikornbank, which is the fourth-largest in Thailand, was recently reported by the local newspaper The Nation that the bank has joined the blockchain-based Visa B2B connect program for cross-border payments. Kasikornbank, formerly known as Thai Farmers Bank, is headquartered in Bangkok. The Kasikornbank had $96 billion in total assets in March 2018 according to a recent report.

The bank becomes the first bank in the country to use the blockchain technology. It is quite amusing as the technology was introduced to the world as a replacement to evade the intermediates that were involved in the transaction, basically, the banks.

The aim of the adoption of the technology is to broaden the use of blockchain in the country’s banking sector. Visa’s B2B Connect was launched in 2017, the platform was designed with an aim to give financial institutions a secure, fast and predictable way to process corporate cross-border B2B payments. At the initial stage of the program The U.S. Commerce Bank, South Korea’s Shinhan Bank, the Union Bank of Philippines, and the United Overseas Bank in Singapore were the first to use the blockchain based Visa’s B2B Connect to make the direct transactions.

Visa’s country manager in Thailand, Suripong Tantiyanon, throwing light in accordance to the partnership stated that the use of the new technology will help them to enhance more with the technology and Visa B2B will support developments in “security, governance, and distributed ledger technology.”

The Bank of Thailand (BoT), in August, started to allow the local banks to set up subsidiaries for dealing with cryptocurrencies. The officials have allowed the Thai banks to issue digital tokens, provide crypto brokerage services, run crypto-related businesses, and invest in cryptocurrencies through subsidiaries.

The senior vice president for Kasikornbank, Siriporn Wongtriphop, also commented that the adoption of the blockchain technology along with the added security its use for international payments will help his company become “the leader in the industry.”