Citi increases its share in the Ethereum Komgo platform

The american bank Citi revealed that it "recently" increased its stake in Komgo, a platform Ethereum of trade finance specialized in commodity trading.

In an interview with ConsenSys, Kris Van Broekhoven, the trade finance director of Citi, returned to the project Komgo.

Launched in 2018 by 15 major banks, commercial companies and oil giants in partnership with ConsenSys, the blockchain platform Komgo aims to simplify, secure and standardize operations for trade finance.

The business has now surpassed $ 1 billion funding on its platform and prides itself on having reduced the time it takes to issue a digital letter of credit from ten days to just 1 hour.

Komgo strives to go beyond simply transforming the current process of financing the trade in basic products into a digital process… The platform helps to speed up execution times, improve data reconciliation and reduce risks of fraud and human error, ”said Van Broekhoven.

The leader then said that Citi had recently increased his participation in Komgo, without giving more details, to allow the company to continue its development.

Now that the platform is up and running, the focus is on user integration, ”he added.

According to him, the blockchain technology has passed the stage ofexperimentation and "most" of the market participants are now aware of the benefits it can bring.

I believe that in 3 to 5 years, the market will form a new ecosystem where users will communicate digitally directly or via platforms, and data can be exchanged between separate but connected platforms. In the world of commodity finance, this ecosystem is already emerging on Komgo, Vakt, Covantis and other initiatives, "he concluded.