The Nordic financial services group Nordea extended its availability of trading services to SME customers of Europe to trade with other European companies which earlier was accessible by large size companies with its We.Trade blockchain based trading platform. Now, the trustworthy cross border trading is not limited to any particular class of business rather it is open for small and middle-sized business customers as well. The billion-dollar financial institution announced on May 9. Press release on the website.
The We.Trade European blockchain trading boutique is created on IBM blockchain platform which is powered by Hyperledger Fabric. We.Trade is a joint development of 10 plus leading European Banks. These are Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Santander, Société Générale, UniCredit including Nordic Bank that joined the solid backbone in November 2017. The bank successfully launched its services in April 2019, with a soft launch approach. The bank has now effectively avoided complex and manual processes and made its financial services available to the businesses in a speedy way with the help of We.Trade platform.
Benefits of We.Trade Trading Platform
Now businesses can manage their trade with easy and efficient ways of transacting online with super speed, trust, and full transparency. This service will allow the users to monitor the trades from order to delivery because everyone on We.Trade would be screened and verified by their banks.
Nordan bank is able to solve the biggest and the common problems of trust for their overseas trading partners including small and medium-sized companies. Apart from trade finance, We.trade is enabling an ecosystem of trust so that people can trade globally without a second thought. Magnus Montan, head of Business Banking has to say while expressing the advantages of the trading platform.
The Global Head of Trade Finance & Working Capital Management at Nordea, PatrikZekkar also commented in the document about the benefits of We.Trade hyper ledger based trading facility. He said, “The contracts facilitate the multilinguistic feature which enables customers to understand smoothly. This would effectively work for the order and contract processes by enabling buyers and sellers to follow the set of rules and choose between the events driven payment as per their flexibility. This would finally provide security when the payment would trigger.”
Zekkar further mentioned that the institution is in the process of building an advanced and secure cross-border trading and payment platform that would be able to cater the needs of all small and large scale business. The initiative is possibly able to increase the liquidity and growth factor for the businesses.
Nordea Bank Still Lacks Support for Cryptocurrency
Since December 2017, the Scandinavian financial services giant Nordea started showing its disliking towards cryptocurrencies and especially Bitcoin(BTC). In the evaluation process, it closed the accounts of Norwegian cryptocurrency exchange Bitmynt As. The bank also won the case in May 2018, which SturleSunde, founder of Bitmynt As litigated against it. The Oslo District court also went out in favor of the bank and given the objective reason for the constituted risk of money laundering mechanisms and transactions related to criminal offenses. Nordea bank has the right under the provision of Finance Contracts Act to deny the customer relationship which constitutes risk and reputation.
In late January 2018, Nordea bank also forbade its employees from owning bitcoin (BTC). Following this negative move and ban of the bank Danish Financial Federation chairman Kent Petersen joined DJØF Union consultant Niels Mosegaardforcefully rebuked the Nordea move because it caused almost 31,500 people to dissociate from any Bitcoin (BTC) holdings.
Nordea Bank Past Achievements
Nordea Bank Oyj, dubbed “Nordea” operates in northern Europe and based in Helsinki, Finland.
As per the information available till 2016, the total net income of the Nordic bank is €3.766 billion including total assets of around $615.659 billion and having equity of €32.409 billion with an operating income of €4.625 billion. The bank is providing services in corporate and retail banking and also dealing in asset management assistance.
With over 1,400 branches Nordea functions across both the Nordic and Baltic regions. The bank is present in 20 countries worldwide, operating through full-service branches, subsidiaries, and representative offices. However, the financial institution primarily offers services in Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
With the successive mergers and acquisitions that took place between 1997 and 2000 of the Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish banks of Merita Bank, Danish banks, Unibank, Kreditkassen (Christiania Bank), and Nordbanken the bank has established a strong foothold in the North European region.
Adoption of Blockchain& Smart Move of Nordea Bank Shows Cleaning up its Bad Image
Interestingly, the largest financial group in the Nordic region who won the case against anti-money laundering practices against the Bitmynt As itself got two warnings from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) due to its active participation in using offshore companies in tax havens according to the Panama papers in 2015, and found “serious deficiencies” in how Nordea monitors money laundering. Between 2004 and 2014, the Nordea section in Luxembourg caught almost 400 offshore companies in Panama and the British Virgin Islands for its customers. In 2015, Nordea had to pay the major thinkable fine – over 5 million EUR.
The financial institution by joining with other European banks while deploying blockchaintechnology surely is in the process of expurgating the remarks and allegations which it faced due to its involvement in damaging and immoral practices of the past.
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