Both banks are set to issue new stablecoins that adhere to their respective national currencies and will allow users purchase the stablecoins for international payments with users of the other bank.

With the help of the Hedera Token Service (HTS) and Hedera Consensus Service (HCS), both the banks plan on testing the issuance and distribution of stablecoins, especially in cases that suffer from high fees, longer waits and absence of tracking feature.

Going by the current financial systems, people or organisations who want to send cross-border payments have to pay high intermediate bank costs and cross-border payments between countries are also lacking liquidity and a direct network. As a result, customers typically pay the equivalent of an extra $20-$80 along with a cross-border transaction fee.

Additionally, it takes three to seven business days to complete and customers can’t track their transfers during the process. Once the stablecoin solution is developed by the banks, both individuals and organisations can send and receive funds in a locally denominated stablecoin by paying a minimum fee.

Shinhan Bank released a statement to the media, saying, “Joining the Hedera Governing Council this spring has allowed us to significantly accelerate our engagement with other global industry leaders to leverage the power of Hedera’s fast, fair, green public distributed ledger. Cost-effective, efficient international remittance is the perfect, real-world financial use case to build on a network that provides Hedera’s speed and low cost.”

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GFIN aims to consult on topics such as the growth of technologies like distributed ledger tech and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as the regulation of securities and Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), among others—according to the press release.

Christopher Woolard, FCA board member and Executive Director of Strategy and Competition, also stated in the press release that the creation of GFIN will help organizations “harnes[s] the benefits of innovation in financial services for consumers, while managing the potential harm.”This new alliance is a part of the further implementation and development of the successful progress of FCA’s global fintech regulatory sandbox that was launched earlier this year.

GFIN will seek to provide “a more efficient way for innovative firms to interact with regulators, helping them navigate between countries as they look to scale new ideas. It will also create a new framework for co-operation between financial services regulators on innovation related topics, sharing different experiences and approaches.” , according to the description by the FCA.

According to a July report conducted by the Big Innovation Centre, DAG Global and Deep Knowledge Analystics had stated that the UK was set to become a leader in blockchain technology and the crypto economy by 2022.

This coming fall, the FCA expects to be in a position to formally launch GFIN.

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March 15, 2017: BTL GROUP LTD. (TSX Venture: BTL) has announced that Jon Downing has joined its advisory board. BTL, which operates from both Canada and the UK, offers blockchain solutions to businesses.

Over the last 25 years, Jon has successfully delivered innovation, business and technology services at some of the largest and most respected global companies, including Visa, J P Morgan, HP Enterprise Services & American Express.

Over the last two years, Jon was a key member of Visa Europe’s Innovation Hub, Visa Collab, which was responsible for identifying and testing the most exciting, revolutionary ideas in payments and developing them into commercial realities. He set up and led the blockchain practice at Visa Collab and was responsible for leading multiple high-profile proof of concept initiatives with key start-up companies, including BTL, testing ideas for new products and services across the whole payments eco-system, with specific focus and thought leadership in the blockchain and crypto-currency domain.

“I am joining BTL because I passionately believe in the transformational potential of blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies,” Jon said. “BTL have correctly identified and solved for the privacy and scalability challenges through the innovative design and architecture of their Interbit solution, which I directly experienced during the Interbank Settlement pilot, along with BTL’s focus on excellence, meeting and exceeding client expectations, along with building a compelling vision for the future. I look forward to working with BTL’s leadership team and board of directors to help realise the company vision of bringing the world’s critical systems into consensus.”

“BTL has had a strong start to the year with the launch of our European energy pilot and continuing work in the interbank-settlement space,” said Guy Halford-Thompson, BTL’s Chief Executive Officer. “We believe Jon’s experience in the finance space will help us accelerate commercialisation of our Interbit platform. Jon’s domain expertise, as well as his experience growing and managing large teams, are critical skills which BTL will greatly benefit from as we continue to expand this year.”

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