Commerzbank Tests Blockchain, Digital Euros

A joint project by Commerzbank, Evonik and BASF has tested a new blockchain platform which will be able to handle supply chain processes, a press release says.

The test has seen payments between Evonik and BASF checked, paid and booked in a totally automated, digital fashion, through a programmed payment process. The project also involved creating digital euros to make the payments.

The base of the project is the mutual supplier relationship between Evonik and BASF, with the companies enjoying an active relationship for years and regularly settling trade receivables.

The pilot saw the two companies using Commerzbank’s blockchain program along with Elemica, the data service provider.

The platform, according to the release, was then able to generate a total and tamper-proof depiction of the business processes needed. Blockchain was then used to automate the payments. Because of that, the electronic money was made available to the partners for trading on the distributed ledger technology.

And once the transactions were automatically validated via the digital contracts and programmable money, the payments were processed.

BASF has already been using blockchain technology in pilot projects before, employing it for the secure exchange of data and information between numerous different partners and chains. The technology allows BASF to collaborate more effectively and later on. And now that the pilot is completed, BASF, Evonik and Commerzbank plan to keep looking more into the ways to use these technologies, including expanding it for other supply chain partners.

Commerzbank has also been dabbling in blockchain, helping clients in situations like processing machine-to-machine payments or money market securities transactions.

Blockchain has been used to boost supply chains for some time, acting as a “safe deposit box” for retail data, and creating a digital way to store and share data. One advantage is that blockchain data updates itself, and so the permissions are limited and can’t be hijacked by outside parties.