IBM's Bluemix Garage in Singapore has announced a new effort aimed at helping financial institutions better comply with know-your-customer (KYC) requirements using blockchain.

Announced yesterday

at the Singapore FinTech festival, the project (a collaboration with KYC startup KYCK!) aims to provide enhanced identity verification services, enabling KYCK!'s customers to more rapidly on-board customers in a secure environment.

The hope is the service will reduce the time and expense financial service providers encounter when on-boarding new customers and complying with KYC regulation. Using a permissioned ledger, many of the existing steps can be streamlined into a one-time process, the partners said.

Built on the open-source Hyperledger project, the service will provide KYCK! customers with video conferencing and encrypted document submission capabilities for the secure on-boarding of new customers.

When identity has been confirmed, KYCK! will enter the customer's information into current bank checks, though a blockchain-based business network (including banking and governmental entities) would also be leveraged.

For more details, read the full report here.

IBM image via Shutterstock