Blockchain

The bank has quit the R3 consortium, whose tech decisions were at odds with its own.

With an ever-increasing number of unsecured devices connected to one another, the potential for cyberattackers to overwhelm any organization is a clear and present danger.

The global messaging network Swift and its fintech challenger, Ripple, have been vying for bankers’ hearts and minds for more than a year. Whoever prevails, their latest moves could bring needed change to how international banking is done.

There has been a lot of activity lately around modernizing cross-border transfers through the use of blockchain and and cloud-hosted technology, but despite the potential savings in cost and time, none of these methods has caused a meaningful decline in the use of cash.

Using a program built by Ripple, BBVA has transferred about 50 euro-denominated payments to Mexico from Spain in seconds. Such transactions normally take up to four days to clear, the bank said.

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA, Spain’s No. 2 lender, has executed its first cross-border payments through a system based on the software that supports bitcoin.

Ripple's distributed ledger platform has fed an appetite for cheaper and more efficient cross-border payments, but it may not measure up to the needs of a larger market. Ripple wants to scale its payment system to something resembling a large card network.

The bank said the test showed blockchain can be used to conduct secure, low-cost cross-border payments without intermediaries.

The blockchain-based platform, set to launch later this year, promises to make gold trading around the world faster, more transparent and safer.

Five banks and the tech firms R3 and HQLA^X are using distributed ledger technology to make it easier to transfer liquid securities and collateral.