Yesterday, the blockchain trade finance network Marco Polo announced Indian IT giant Tech Mahindra joined its platform. DBS Bank was the banking partner in a series of trade finance transactions that Tech Mahindra enabled on Marco Polo’s receivables discounting feature.
Tech Mahindra provides a range of IT services such as consulting, application development, infrastructure and business process outsourcing. The company had revenues of $4.9 billion during FY18-19.
“Tech Mahindra will collaborate with DBS to move its Receivables Financing operations on the Marco Polo network. This move is in line with the general shift towards Open Accounts Trade and by extension to integrated Supply Chain Finance solutions,” said Rajesh Dhuddu, Global Head of Blockchain, Tech Mahindra.
The Marco Polo Network offers open account trade financing along with ERP integration. This enables companies to automatically upload invoices on the distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform and choose banks to work with. Currently, the platform supports ERP systems such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Xero, and Oracle Netsuite.
Marco Polo is built on R3’s Corda enterprise blockchain, and TradeIX is the technology partner. The platform offers services such as receivables discounting, payment commitment and payables financing.
The trade finance network is currently ready for production and has seen several trails from its global partners. A few months ago, about 70 different organizations completed an open account trade finance trial using Marco Polo’s blockchain platform. The trial focused on the receivables discounting solution offered by Marco Polo.
The full list or Marco Polo members include Alfa Bank, Anglo Gulf Trade Bank, Bank of America, Bangkok Bank, Bayern LB, BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, Bradesco, Commerzbank, Credit Agricole, Danske Bank, DNB, Helaba, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, LBBW, Mastercard, MUFG, National Bank of Fujairah, National Australia Bank, Natixis, Natwest, OP Financial, Raiffeisen Bank, SMBC, S-Servicepartner, Standard Bank, and Standard Chartered.
Meanwhile, Tech Mahindra has other blockchain interests and is working with Dutch blockchain firm Quantoz for digital payments. The IT consultancy previously worked with Samsung SDS and Pega for a traceability solution and is also behind the UAE land registry blockchain. Tech Mahindra is a member of Hyperledger.
