State-Owned Chinese Bank to Finance Small Businesses With Blockchain Tech

China Construction Bank, one of the nation's "Big Four" state-owned commercial banks, launched a blockchain-based platform to support the financing of small businesses on Friday. 

The bank aims to help small and micro companies sell their financial claims such as short-term notes receivable at a discount in return for immediate cash payments via the platform, according to a report by ChainNews. 

The new platform will enable the bank to buy financial claims from factoring companies that had previously purchased the assets from small businesses, the report said. 

The bank will also offer other financial services, including credit risk guarantee, and receivables management via the platform. 

Many of the financial services could be used for export companies to gain short-term liquidity since they tend to go through a time-consuming process to receive the payments from their importers. 

The new platform is the latest effort for the bank to develop such trade finance services on blockchain-based platforms. 

The bank upgraded its trade finance platform BCTrade in October after it broke $53 billion transaction volume since its launch in April 2018. 

The version of the platform expands its factoring and forfeiting services across different banking and non-bank institutions in China and abroad. 

The China Construction Bank joins the Bank of China in tapping blockchain to provide support for small businesses. The Bank of China announced Friday that it had completed the pricing and issuance of some $2.8 billion in bonds for loans made to small enterprises using blockchain technology.

Several countries have been trying out blockchain-based trade finance services. 

Trade finance blockchain Marco Polo, built by TradeIX and R3, has onboarded more than 20 global banks and piloted its first transaction between Germany and Russia in the same month.

Asian banking giant DBS, Trafigura Group and the Singaporean government also planned to facilitate global trade by a blockchain-based platform.