Billon and FIS announce blockchain partnership

Billon has signed a letter of intent with US financial technology heavyweight, FIS, to explore joint product development and sales opportunities for its portfolio of corporate blockchain solutions.

This follows on from the FIS VC Accelerator Programme and will evaluate the integration of Billon’s distributed architecture for document and identity management into FIS’ global financial technology suite.

The two will also look at the potential for collaboration on corporate and SME payments, and micropayments for digital and smartphone devices. Billon has similar agreements in place with Mitsui Knowledge Industry (MKI) in Japan and SE Asia, and with BIK covering the CEE market.

“FIS has a leading role in setting and maintaining technology standards for the global financial services industry, making this agreement an historic milestone for Billon and a massive step forwards for civilised blockchain technology,” says Andrzej Horoszczak, CEO and Founder of Billon. “Our mission is to civilise blockchain technology to solve the world’s financial and data management problems. Alongside FIS, we look forward to introducing this solution and others to the global market.”

Anything IBM can do…

The team up follows yesterday’s announcement that IBM and CLS are launching LedgerConnect, a platform that enables financial institutions and software vendors to share and consume apps and services on a distributed ledger network.

Barclays and Citi are among nine financial institutions that are participating in a proof of concept. They have selected vendors including Baton Systems, Calypso, Copp Clark, IBM, MPhasis, OpenRisk, SynSwap and Persistent Systems to participate. Following the PoC, the plan is to make the platform widely available.

Alan Marquard, Chief Strategy and Development Officer at CLS, says: “LedgerConnect is part of our strategy to explore how we can provide safe and robust solutions that create efficiencies and reduce risk for a diverse range of firms operating in the financial markets. We expect LedgerConnect to deliver enhanced efficiencies and economies of scale over single-purpose distributed ledger networks.”

“Together IBM and CLS have been early pioneers in advancing blockchain solutions for the financial services space,” says Marie Wieck, General Manager, IBM Blockchain. “Building on the success of CLSNet and leveraging the strong relationship CLS has with the world’s leading financial institutions, LedgerConnect is uniquely positioned as a blockchain marketplace for the financial services industry, which will accelerate innovation across the ecosystem with value added services for blockchain networks.”