In December last year, a new blockchain platform was launched to track the sale and distribution to consumers of Polish treasury bonds or government savings bonds. It involved a consortium of Poland’s payments clearing house KIR, PKO Bank Polski, IBM and Coinfirm with participation from the Ministry of Finance.
The solution is primarily being used for better reporting. Given that bond distribution is often done via banks and other intermediaries, it enables all parties to access the same data. The project uses enterprise blockchain Hyperledger Fabric.
It’s not the first use of blockchain in this area, with both the Philippines and Thailand launching similar retail government bonds solutions. In those cases, the key stated benefit was lowering the costs of issuance and distribution. Blockchain also makes it viable to support a smaller minimum investment, in turn enhancing financial inclusion.
In 2020 the Polish government issued a record amount of savings bonds, to the tune of 28.4 billion PLN ($7.6 billion).
PKO Bank Polski, Poland’s largest bank, previously worked with blockchain startup Coinfirm on a document authentication system.
Meanwhile, the corporate bond market and its issuance frictions are attracting significant blockchain interest around the world. The latest addition to the fray is Singapore’s Marketnode, a joint venture between the Singapore Exchange (SGX) and Temasek.
