IBM and a Singapore blockchain startup called KYCK! announced a partnership on the opening day of the first Singapore Fintech Festival, a week-long event that drew close to 11,000 people from more
IBM and a Singapore blockchain startup called KYCK! announced a partnership on the opening day of the first Singapore Fintech Festival, a week-long event that drew close to 11,000 people from more than 50 countries. The two companies will build a platform on Hyperledger Fabric that banks can use to streamline client on-boarding.
The platform includes video conferencing and encrypted document submission for customer on-boarding, with identity verification running on a permissioned blockchain network that banks and government agencies could join. After verification, KYCK! enters the customer information into existing bank systems or its own third-party checks before completing the account setup.
Darryl Tan, KYCK!'s co-founder, said: "We were fortunate to have found a partner in IBM with the right capabilities to enable us to apply our financial industry know-how and bring our ideas to life." He added: "Working with the IBM Bluemix Garage, we have seen how blockchain can improve operational efficiency, increase transparency and reduce transaction risks. We hope that financial institutions will see an improvement in their current customer on-boarding processes and the overall customer experience."
The IBM Bluemix Garage functions as a hub where developers, product managers and designers collaborate to build applications on IBM's cloud platform. Eight of these facilities operate worldwide, in London, New York, Nice, Melbourne, San Francisco, Tokyo and Toronto.
The festival also unveiled finalists for the Fintech Awards. Two blockchain companies made the cut: Digix Global and Keychain.
Keychain maintains its headquarters in Singapore with an operations center in Tokyo. The platform provides decentralized authentication, helping clients solve business problems involving access control and identity verification. It offers a tamper-resistant infrastructure for secure messaging across different networks like FIX, Zengrin and SWIFT, handles historical digital signature attribution, and enables fast consensus among multiple parties. Keychain also reached the finals of the BBVA Open Talent Challenge in its eighth year.
Digix Global, based in Singapore, built a tokenization platform for gold and other physical assets on Ethereum. The company developed proof-of-asset verification on the blockchain. Its product suite includes the Proof of Asset Protocol, Digix Gold Tokens (a gold-backed token for Ethereum), and DGD tokens used in Digix's decentralized autonomous organization.
The Fintech Awards will distribute SG$1.15 million (US$810,000) among the top ten winners. Singapore's Monetary Authority and the Association of Banks in Singapore will announce the winners on November 17 at Universal Studios Singapore.
