The fintech company R3 has announced that Mizuho bank (Japan), UniCredit (Italy) and Nordea (Sweden) joined the global consortium of banks developing blockchain framework for markets, Reuters reports.

The consortium members, including Citi, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Goldman Sachs, are seeking to develop and apply to global financial markets the distributed ledger technology, which underpins the bitcoin digital currency. With 13 financial institutions from all over the world which joined the consortium in September, the international partnership now counts 25 members.The purpose of the collaboration is to develop common standards and applications of the blockchain technology for the international fintech community.



“We have been inundated with interest in this project from banks across the world since launching with an initial nine institutions just over a month ago,” said R3's CEO David Rutter.



Apparently, all three banks have experienced some difficulties dealing with bitcoin firms.



Mizuho is one of the Japan’s three largest banks. Being Mt.Gox’s banker in the past, the bank featured in the news last year when it defended the collapsed bitcoin exchange in the lawsuit. UniCredit closed Bitstamp’s account without further explanations in August 2014, while earlier this month Swedish banks, including Nordea, has taken hard stance on bitcoin companies.





“New technology drives a fundamental change of consumer and corporate behaviour and demands. We want to build the best digital experiences for our customers, and we are right now investing heavily in new IT systems and promising new technology in order to be competitive in the new banking landscape. That is why this is a highly relevant partnership for us,” says Erik Zingmark, the Deputy Head of Nordea Transaction Products and member of the Distributed Ledger Group steering committee.

Currently banks are often reluctant to work with bitcoin firms who use the block chain technology for financial transactions, because the policies are neither standardised nor regulated. The R3 consortium hopes to solve this problem.





Sonya Belova