The system of conversion of foreign exchange transactions CLS and IBM announced the completion of CLSNet blockchain-a platform for the netting of payments. First to the platform was joined by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, in a few months, the network will be joined by six institutions, including the Hong Kong branch of Bank of China.
In comments to CoinDesk the managing Director of the technology division CLS Kamaraju RAM (Ram Komarraju) said:
“We have correlated and confirmed the first transaction and successfully built the report on netting for the participating parties.”
This platform is based on Hyperledger Fabric in the first place was created to solve the main problems of Forex trading is the lack of appropriate standards and the optimal level of process automation. For example, even regular netting between the two companies, sometimes the process still have to be managed manually. In addition, some Forex traders do not determine the net volume using gross figures. This leads to additional risks in the settlement of transfers and the growth factor required short-term liquidity.
Barry Lo (Barry Lo), General Manager of the operations Department of the Bank of China in Hong Kong, noted the high relevance of the system for currencies not supported by CLS:
“CLSNet will increase the efficiency of workflows, risk management, and reconciliation of transactions and the netting of payments in currencies not used in the CLS, such as CNH [offshore Chinese yuan approx. CoinMarket. News]”.
At the time of launch CLSNet supports 120 currencies. Moreover, the platform operates in full compliance with the rules of Forex trading, developed in consultation with CLS.
Answering the question about the financing of the blockchain consortium R3, Kamaraju stressed that the fact of cooperation with the R3 does not affect current and planned projects CLS:
“Funding of R3 does not affect the further development of our products on the basis of Hyperledger Fabric, because we do not believe that the scope of the DLT should be submitted to “the universe the same network”. We believe that industry will benefit from the availability of choice on the market providers, so we decided to team up with two key service providers, R3 and IBM”.
Development CLSNet was conducted in conditions of secrecy for two years. However, in July 2018, CLS was forced to disclose information about the project in connection with the increased concern of customers.
