Banks link up on BankChain to exploit blockchain solutions

Mumbai: For over a month, representatives of most major banks in India have been participating in so-called online Blockathons every Thursday. The members get access to the node and source code for all BankChain projects, besides training material and access to a dedicated private test blockchain, according to Sudin Baraokar, chief mentor of the BankChain alliance. The BankChain alliance is also working on helping banks share their private blockchain solutions with their counterparts. By providing the same set of loan documents to other banks on a shared permissioned blockchain, banks could also make money from each transaction,” explains Rohas Nagpal, chief blockchain architect of Primechain Technologies, the Pune-based startup that operates BankChain. In a November 2017 white paper, the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology, which was established by the Reserve Bank of India to focus on banking technology, suggested that banks could set up a “private blockchain for their internal purposes”.