BNP Paribas, the French multinational bank, and financial services company, announced that it has completed its first real-time blockchain payments and has processed various live payments for two of its longstanding corporate clients, Amcor and Panini Group.

With the help of the distributed ledger technology, BNP Paribas successfully processed and cleared payments for Panini Group, an international leader in collectibles and trading cards and Amcor, a global leader in packaging solutions.

The payments were cleared in various currencies between BNP Paribas bank accounts located in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The payments were swift and fully processed highlighting the real potential of blockchain technology, eliminating delays, unexpected fees, and processing errors, thus allowing real-time cash management, the release said.

"This proof-of-concept demonstrates that blockchain technology offers real opportunities to considerably improve our offer for corporate treasury managers. On the payments front, this confirms our strong commitment to follow closely and further accelerate our participation in a number of market initiatives aiming at improving the corporate payments experience using blockchain technology,” Jacques Levet, Head of Transaction Banking EMEA at BNP Paribas CIB, said.

The completion of blockchain payments follows the announcement that the French bank is co-developing new products and services with a number of clients. It was focused to design the next generation of Transaction Banking and Cash Management products with blockchain technology.

‘’Blockchain technology applied to cross-border payments offers an innovative way of processing in near-real-time high-value transactions between different companies. This proof-of-concept shows how powerful such technology can be and how it can be utilized as an effective and efficient response to the main issues that treasurers face on a daily basis. This great achievement was possible thanks to the collaboration between Panini’s Group Treasury teams and the various teams of BNP Paribas,” Fabrizio Masinelli, Panini Group Treasurer, said.