London-based Innovate Finance is opening a blockchain lab in an attempt to explore the distributed ledger’s potential and drive its adoption by financial services companies.

The independent membership association, which seeks to drive the UK’s position in the global FinTech sector, will open the centre in partnership with Hartree Centre – a high performance computing and research facility founded by the UK government in collaboration with IBM.

Lawrence Wintermeyer, CEO at Innovate Finance, said in a statement:

“We are excited about the prospect of our members openly collaborating to deliver use cases to the wider community. If we can use the lab to develop open standards for the blockchain in financial services, we will be moving one step closer to accelerating the mass adoption of this breakthrough technology.”

The blockchain lab is due to launch in October and the first batch of prototype use cases are expected to be developed by the end of this year.

According to the company statement, lab participants will attempt to develop practical use cases for distributed ledger technology as well as explore new ways in which it can improve anti-money laundering and know-your-customer guidelines to benefit customers and regulators.

Innovate Finance – which has attracted more than 120 members since it launched in 2014 – is the latest organisation to open a blockchain technology research facility.

Earlier this year, Swiss investment bank UBS announced the launch of its own London-based blockchain research lab.

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