Mizuho Financial, Nordea, UniCredit Join R3 Blockchain Consortium

Financial innovation company R3 announced in September the formation of a partnership to design and deliver advanced distributed/shared ledger technologies to global financial markets. The partnership saw major banks come together namely Barclays, BBVA, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, State Street, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS.

“We have been inundated with interest in this project from banks across the world since launching with an initial nine institutions just over a month ago,” said R3’s CEO David Rutter. “An emphasis on working with the market has always been a key differentiator of our project from day one, and so we are delighted to broaden the network once again and grow the resources we have to research and develop this exciting technology.”

The number of participating banks has been growing since then. R3 announced last week that three more banks – Mizuho Financial Group, Nordea and UniCredit, have now joined the consortium, bringing the total number of banks collaborating on the project to 25, Finextra reported. 

“Distributed ledger technologies might become the next disruptive technology that has the potential to innovate everyday banking activities,” said Mr. Toshitsugu Okabe, Deputy President & Executive Officer in charge of Incubation Project Team, at Mizuho Financial Group (MHFG). “We are delighted to be a part of this and believe the partnership will bring us to the next level of efficient and improved banking service in every aspect”.

The other banks that joined the consortium include Bank of America, BNY Mellon, Citi, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Morgan Stanley, National Australia Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, SEB, Societe Generale and Toronto-Dominion Bank.

The group will work together on research, experimentation, design, and engineering to help advance state-of-the-art enterprise-scale shared ledger solutions to meet banking requirements for security, reliability, performance, scalability, and audit.