The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) is set to launch a blockchain-based trade finance platform next month, The Financial Times reported.

The platform has been designed by OneConnect, Ping An Group’s financial technology company, and will be one of the earliest government-backed blockchain trade finance platforms to go live. Although the final number of financial institutions has not yet been confirmed, the report suggests that 21 banks, including HSBC and Standard Chartered, are expected to join.

“Instead of individual banks trying to do this you have the regulator trying to bring the banks together,” said Jessica Tan, Ping An’s deputy chief executive (as quoted by FT).

Tan explained that a key feature is that the platform would facilitate greater access to trade and supply-chain finance for small firms, which find it difficult to access banking services. The platform would help to make the existing trade finance and supply chain finance transactions more efficient by reducing the time and paperwork, as well as making it easier to identify fraud.

In March 2017, the HKMA, along with Deloitte and a number of banks, developed a distributed ledger technology (DLT) proof of concept for trade finance. Later in October, it announced its plans to commercialise an HKMA-led, DLT-based, trade finance proof-of-concept into a production system named Hong Kong Trade Finance Platform (HKTFP) to digitize and share trade documents, automate processes and reduce risks and fraud.

In addition, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced in November its collaboration with the HKMA to develop the ‘Global Trade Connectivity Network’ – a cross-border platform for trade finance using DLT.