Digital Trade Chain Consortium launches we.trade, announces Joint Venture and Banco Santander

Since January 2017, a group of seven banks (Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Societe Generale and UniCredit), together with IBM, have been developing the Digital Trade Chain platform, a ground-breaking shared platform that aims at making domestic and cross-border commerce easier for European companies by harnessing the power of distributed ledger technology.

Recently, Banco Santander joined the consortium as a founding partner.

The eight founding banks intend to establish a Joint Venture company before end of 2017 that will own, manage and distribute the Digital Trade Chain platform. The intention is to incorporate the new legal entity in the Republic of Ireland.

Because of the expansion and the further internationalisation of the platform, the consortium has decided to rebrand the Digital Trade Chain platform to the more appealing , stronger brand name we.trade. From today we.trade will replace Digital Trade Chain as the name of the platform.

The enlarged consortium will continue to develop we.trade as a platform that can seamlessly connect the parties involved in a trade transaction i.e. the buyer, buyer’s bank, seller, seller’s bank and transporter. The platform will be accessible from any connected device.

This new product will simplify trade finance processes for companies by addressing the challenge of managing, tracking and securing domestic and international trade transactions. Companies can easily and efficiently trade with more trust.

The commercialisation of the platform is expected in Q2 2018. From February 2018 test clients of the founding banks will be able to use the platform.

We welcome other banks to join the platform as member of the consortium. Interested banks can contact the we.trade onboarding team.