Capital One Testing Blockchain for Healthcare Claims

US financial services company Capital One is working with blockchain startup Gem on a new healthcare claims project.

Capital One announced a series of new partnerships today aimed at rebooting its treasury services platform. Though details about its work with Gem are light, the firm described the project as one focused on creating new solutions using blockchain within “a scalable revenue cycle management network”.

Capital One framed its work with Gem and others as a means to “reinvent” how its treasury services work.

EVP Patrick Moore said in a statement:

“At Capital One we see the new network models and data analytics capabilities as an exciting opportunity to reinvent treasury management to better meet the needs of clients, not only increasing payment efficiency but also generating actionable information about their business.”

The announcement represents the first publicly confirmed blockchain project for Capital One, a major credit card provider in the US. Earlier this year, the company took part in a $30m funding round for blockchain startup Chain. In August, Capital One hired former WilmerHale counsel Elijah Alper to work on fintech projects, an area of focus that also includes blockchain applications.

In an interview last month with CIO, Capital One Europe CIO Rob Harding said that the company was still in a process of weighing “bigger trends” related to the tech, but indicated that blockchain could ultimately impact how the financial services firm does business.

"I think it will play a part; one of the interesting avenues for it, is how a ledger-type data layer could help unify a lot of customer transactions - that's something I've investigated personally as a side project," he said at the time.

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Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Gem.