Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Telstra Collaborate On ‘Top Secret’ Blockchain Project

Blockchain, News | April 9, 2019 By:

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company, are collaborating on a “top-secret” blockchain project, The Australian Financial Review (AFR) reported.

The blockchain project will reportedly aim to add new levels of security for high-value transactions completed online. The companies, which have been working for months on the project, are developing a blockchain-based electronic escrow service to give customers additional guarantees when making transactions worth thousands of dollars.

In February of this year, CBA, Telstra and Ericsson collaborated to test end-to-end banking solutions over 5G edge computing technologies. At the time, Telstra group executive of Networks and IT Nikos Katinakis said that the project will help to enhance existing banking applications as well as deliver new use cases such as artificial intelligence (AI), all supported by a range of software-defined networking solutions.

It is unclear if the blockchain-based electronic escrow service is part of this collaboration between CBA, Telstra and Ericsson. Spokesman for both CBA and Telstra declined to comment, saying it was too early to discuss.

In late 2017, CBA successfully demonstrated that blockchain could cut time and cost while enhancing transparency and security in global commodities trading – how companies buy and sell raw inputs like copper and aluminium from mine to manufacturer. In 2018, CBA completed a number of major blockchain experiments spanning across debt capital markets, trade and commodities and smart money.