US Trading Technology Firm Partners With R3 Blockchain Consortium

American trading-communications firm IPC Systems has partnered with enterprise blockchain software consortium R3, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph Dec. 3.

IPC is a trading technology service company known for producing trading turrets, which are communications systems used by financial traders on their trading desks. Through the Partnership, IPC plans to support the consortium’s Corda blockchain networks on its Connexus platform.

Connexus Cloud is a financial markets cloud-based platform for data, voice, and business communications and compliance. The product includes financial industry firms, liquidity revenues, energy firms, and market data and clearing companies.

The Corda blockchain network uses smart contracts that are triggered by price or volatility developments in markets. By partnering with R3, IPC will purportedly provide capital market data, making the sources of information used by smart contracts — dubbed “oracles” — more accurate.

IPC Director of Product Management Robert Coole said that “the financial industry interest in blockchain has significantly increased in recent years, with continuous growth of investment to support this emerging technology.”

Today, 26 French companies and five major banks completed a Know Your Customer (KYC) test based on the Corda platform. Trial participants were reportedly able to implement KYC requests within a shared network, with banks having to request access to data and clients able to approve and revoke access, with all the data recorded on the blockchain.

In November, SBI Ripple Asia and the Japan Payment Card Consortium announced a joint proof of concept (PoC) to combat fraud with blockchain technology, that will be based on Corda. The PoC will also aim to prevent damage from fraudulent transactions, as data in the system will be “shared only with those that have a ‘need to know.’”