Besides storing medical data and handling stock transactions, blockchain technology may soon support international business deals if a group of European banks have their way.

HSBC Bank plc, Deutsche Bank AG and the five other members of the consortium today signed an agreement to develop what they refer to as a Digital Trade Chain, or DTC for short. It’s envisioned as a cross-border deal processing platform that will be based on an application of the same name by Belgium’s KBC Bank N.V., which is participating in the effort as well.

A prototype that the firm unveiled last July showed how its tool can register every detail of a transaction starting from the initial order to the final payment in a distributed ledger. On the front end, information is displayed in a flow chart. KBC claims that its software thus enables the buyers, sellers and numerous intermediaries who are involved in large cross-border deals to share administrative data with one another much more easily than they can today.

The result, according to the bank, is that the costs involved in handling documentation are reduced while the entire process is streamlined. Transactions can subsequently be completed considerably faster, which saves even more overhead at the end of the day. 

DTC aims to provide the same benefits on a global scale. According to its backers, the project will primarily target small and mid-sized businesses that don’t have access to the financial tools used by their larger peers to streamline transaction processing. KBC said back in July that its application was already undergoing testing by several members of the Belgian exporter community, which sells more than three-quarters of its products to other European countries.

In the long run, a system such as DTC could find use in North America and other markets as well. For the time being, however, the project’s backers still need to figure out what blockchain technology they’ll use to implement the platform. They have a choice between widely supported systems such as Hyperledger or one of the numerous alternatives developed independently by startups.

Visa Inc., which is currently building a blockchain-based international payment system of its own, has opted to go with Chain Inc.’s recently open-sourced implementation. The platform will likely be a leading contender during the selection process given that it can be easily modified and has received the approval of the world’s top credit card company.

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