On May 6, HCM City Development Joint Stock Commercial Bank (HDBank, HOSE: HDB) was the first bank in Vietnam to officially join Contour an open commercial financial network, with the aim of increasing the ability of trade finance on a digital platform. Contour’s blockchain-based commercial financial network will further promote HDBank’s service delivery in the field of commercial finance.
Contour is a global financial and commercial network of banks and large corporations such as HSBC, Standard Chartered, Bangkok Bank, R3, CryptoBLK, and Bain & Company. Contour network focuses on a thorough review of the process of Letter of Credit (L/C) issuance. According to the traditional method, L/C will be processed by parties based on paper documents, which takes a lot of time and costs. With L/C digitisation on the blockchain network, processing time and associated costs are greatly reduced.
In particular, in the context of globalised trade and the openness of its extensive financial transaction connectivity, Contour’s blockchain platform allows the applications to handle financial-banking transactions to ensure the necessary superiority with absolute security, transparency and standardisation of data. Transactions between parties on this open financial network are established quickly by digital contracts, without limitation of national and territorial boundaries, without interference or modification; and also has unlimited time of storage to serve the needs of collation, statistics, and management of partner and customer history.
Thanks to the technology of blockchain technology and the commercial cooperation of many banks and large corporations in the world, Contour is changing and boosting management methods to create seamless transactions and instant standard data flows for separate international trade and ecosystem transactions.
Becoming the first Vietnamese bank to join a global connected network, established on the blockchain platform, is the first step of HDBank in the revolution of the method of issuing new L/C and bringing opportunity for Vietnamese businesses to take advantage of online L/C transactions with partners in foreign trade activities. This is also part of the strong digital transformation process for HDBank to become the leading bank in the retail and small and medium sized enterprises (SME) segment in Vietnam.
According to Carl Wegner general director of Contour, the company focuses on setting up a neutral platform that banks and businesses can use for trade finance transactions. He shared that to fully exploit the potential that blockchain could bring, banks and businesses needed to be able to cooperate and create new connections. This was also the ultimate goal that Contour aimed to with the participation of HDBank in the network.
Pham Quoc Thanh, general director of HDBank, added that the bank recognised the potential of the digital platform in revolutionising L/C issuance method. Through cooperation with Contour, HDBank continues to improve and enhance the flexibility in issuing L/C, streamline processes and provide capital to businesses in the most efficient manner.
Together with businesses and the development of the economy, HDBank prioritises trade finance as well as perfecting the unique ecosystem. In 2019, HDBank’s Trade Finance was awarded the Best Trade Finance Service of the year by Asiamoney and was assessed and voted by Euromoney as the leading bank in Asia-Pacific market. At the same time, after 30 years of operation in the market. The bank has expanded its network across Vietnam with 286 banking transaction points and more than 17,000 financial transaction points across the country and established relationships with over 400 major financial institutions around the world.
