A new Hong Kong-based blockchain trade finance platform has just launched this week that was developed by twelve major global banks, Reuters reported this Wednesday. The platform was developed by Canadian-based HSBC, France-based BNP Paribas, Great Britain-based Standard Chartered, and nine other major banks.

Blockchain Trade Finance Platform

The new platform is called eTrade Connect, and on Wednesday, HSBC said it reduced the time it takes to approve trade loan applications. Usually, these loans would take a day and a half to process, but thanks to eTrade, it has been reduced to four hours.

Trade finance transactions were worth over $9 trillion in 2017. Despite the high volume, most of the industry is paper-based and slow. Trade finance transaction processes and procedures haven’t changed in decades, until now.

“Blockchain has transformed a cumbersome, complex process into a simpler but more secure and efficient way of conducting trade,” said Pricerite Chairman Bankee Kwan in a statement issued by HSBC.

The new blockchain trade finance platform is set to revolutionize how trade loan applications are processed around the world. The eTrade platform digitizes the trade documents and automates many trade finance processes. The first successful transactions exchanged and confirmed on the new platform were purchased by Pricerite, a furniture and household goods retailer.