Secure banking and international trade digitization using blockchain

Abstract

Traditional trade processes suffer from a great number of issues about intermediaries, information latency and trust, which, in turn, hinder overall process efficiency. The emerging blockchain technology may have potentials to mitigate those issues by revolutionizing business processes across enterprise borders in various industries. The security of smart contract technology and anti-money-laundering is utilized in tandem to combat the flaws of traditional banking. By decentralizing we can circumvent some of its defects, and achieve autonomous, fast and safe foreign goods trade. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current obstacles in letter of credit and bank transfers related to the imported foreign goods, and suggest a solution using the blockchain technology. Comparative analysis and feasibility study were conducted to identify and validate the prospects, in terms of facilitating process flow and enhancing overall trade performance, of the proposed blockchain-based international trade process model. This study contributes to the conceptual design of a blockchain- and smart-contract based process along with a provision of practical case in business process re-engineering. Further endeavors devoted to blockchain research and application across different sectors are suggested to reach better performance of business process operations.