TD Bank, the U.S. arm of Canadian Toronto-Dominion Bank, surveyed treasury and finance professionals at the end of last year. Ninety percent of respondents believe that blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) will be positive for the payments industry.
The survey identified four reasons for optimism in blockchain. Top of the list is the creation of stronger audit trails (29%), followed by speeding up the payment process (22%). Improving the efficiency of cross-border payments came in third (21%). Eighteen percent cited a reduction in payments fraud.
And payment fraud and cybersecurity was the issue that topped the list of concerns at 44 percent.
“Blockchain technology has broad implications for the commercial payments space, from speeding up settlements to securing cross-border transactions,” said Rick Burke, Head of Corporate Products and Services at TD Bank.
“Even though much of the industry has a baseline understanding that blockchain can evolve and improve payments, the varied responses indicate that the technology’s specific capabilities and implications are still a great unknown for many finance professionals.”
Fourteen percent of respondents said their organization was investing in blockchain training.
The bank conducted the survey at the 2018 Association for Financial Professionals Annual Conference in Chicago in November and 406 people responded.
TD Bank is one of the top ten banks in the U.S.
Three months ago BNY Mellon published results of an in-depth payments survey with 55 corporate clients. Asked about payment initiatives that will impact their company in the next three years, respondents ranked blockchain in ninth spot at 16 percent. That compares to SWIFT gpi in fifth place at 23%. When the time frame was extended to 4 or more years, Blockchain came in fifth at 19% compared to SWIFT gpi in eleventh spot at 11%.
