Wells Fargo, ING Among 5 New Banks Partnering With R3

BNP Paribas, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, ING, MacQuarie and Wells Fargo are the latest major financial institutions to partner with distributed ledger startup R3CEV.

With the announcement, R3 brings the number of financial institutions participating in its stealth initiatives to 30, with other major names including Bank of America, BNY Mellon, Citi, HSBC and Morgan Stanley, among others.

Though details on the project are scarce, project representatives have indicated R3 is seeking to build what it calls a “global fabric of finance”, or a blockchain or distributed ledger system tailored to the needs of the banking community and crafted with its input.

To date, R3 has emerged as the arguable leader of a new pack of startups seeking to adapt the technology underpinning the bitcoin network to enterprise financial use cases, with others including Digital Asset Holdings and Symbiont competing for a similar clientele.

In addition to the new partnerships, R3 announced a number of personnel appointments.

Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn has been tapped by the R3 team to be its chief platform officer, while James Carlyle, a former chief engineer of banking architecture at Barclays, was named its chief engineer.

Tim Swanson and Richard Gendal Brown, two of the company's advisors, have now been formally brought on in full-time roles. Swanson was announced as R3's head of research, while Brown will serve as chief technology officer.

For more on the banks participating in the program, read our full list of those involved here.

Wells Fargo image via Shutterstock