Polish bank PKO Bank Polski has partnered with blockchain startup Coinfirm in its efforts to implement a blockchain solution for document verification.
PKO Bank Polski and Coinfirm have signed a cooperation agreement. Under the partnership, Coinfirm will provide its data provenance and verification platform Trudatum to help verify the authenticity of bank documents using blockchain technology.
“Every document recorded in the blockchain (e.g. proof of a transaction, or bank’s terms and conditions for a given product) will be issued in the form of irreversible abbreviation or hash signed with the bank’s private key. This will allow a client to verify remotely if the files he received from a business partner or from the bank are true, or if a modification of the document was attempted,” wrote the Coinfirm team (as quoted by TechCrunch).
The bank said that it has established a Blockchain Competence Center, which will focus on research and development of blockchain applications in the field of banking.
Grzegorz Pawlicki, Director of Innovation and Customer Experience Office at PKO Bank Polski, said that the bank is interested in understanding blockchain technology and “use it to the fullest extent possible.” He said that the technology, among other things, helps ensure confidentiality and integrity of documents provided to the client.
“Implementation of Trudatum in such a large institution as PKO Bank Polski is a breakthrough on a global scale. This shows that the Polish financial industry is still open to innovation and sets international trends. We can be proud of how quickly and efficiently implement new technologies,” says Paweł Kuskowski, President of Coinfirm, said (loosely translated). “Working with PKO Bank Polski was a great pleasure – we moved quickly and efficiently from pilot implementations to increasingly widespread use of our technology.”
