BBVA Issues $91 Million Loan Using Two Blockchains

Spanish banking giant BBVA has completed a pilot that issued a €75 million ($91 million) corporate loan using two different blockchain technologies.

According to a report from the Financial Times on Thursday, the bank's latest exploration of the technology focuses on the entire issuance process, including negotiation of terms and signing the corporate loan. The system used for the trial is based on both a private digital ledger and the public ethereum blockchain.

The report said that, as as a first step, the pilot requires both the borrower and the bank to start terms negotiation on a privately held distributed ledger that simultaneously updates the transaction's progress on both sides.

As such, BBVA claims the system can reduce the negotiation phase from "days to hours," following which the completed contracts are moved onto the ethereum blockchain for immutable record keeping, the report said.

The latest experiment expands BBVA's existing work in applying blockchain technology across a range of its business operations.

As previously reported by CoinDesk, the bank has already tested a blockchain solution for paperless trade transactions between Europe and Latin America. And in October of last year, it moved to use distributed ledger technology to match the foreign exchange between itself and its Mexican subsidiary.

BBVA is not the only established financial institution investigating the technology's potential to streamline loans transactions.

Recently another two European banking giants – Credit Suisse and Dutch bank ING – also announced the completion of a live $30 million securities lending transaction based on a blockchain application co-developed with enterprise blockchain consortium R3.

BBVA image via Shutterstock