Over the past few decades, advances in digital technology have revolutionised much of the business world, including the financial services industry. Yet today’s approach to trade finance would still look very familiar to merchants of a half a century – and more – ago. Today, the process remains mostly manual, requiring constant (manual) reconciliation and audits to ensure compliance, making it not only expensive, both for importers and exporters, but also error-prone. Customers also struggle with the lack of easy access to accurate status updates, as well as the ability to communicate directly with other participants in the transaction, such as freight forwarders and insurers.
Although the industry has recently begun to explore the use of distributed ledgers to help streamline and improve processes, progress has been limited by the constraints of the technology. This is because the development of truly seamless and automated trade corridors requires a multi-DLT network architecture. But the siloed nature of DLTs means that individual DLTs are, historically, interoperable – and interoperability is critical. Only by bridging isolated networks through interoperability, will the true potential of DLT be unlocked.
Now, Quant provides this interoperability. Our Overledger OS and Overledger Network solutions provide a fast, easy route to interconnecting and interoperating internal and external DLTs and legacy networks, to facilitate unprecedented levels of connectivity while preserving the data ownership and privacy levels expected for financial transactions. By linking different stakeholders and participants with swappable digital assets and payment channels, without the complexity of multiple infrastructure, Overledger allows faster, cheaper, more transparent and more sustainable trade.
