South Korea’s largest foreign exchange bank — Korea Exchange Bank (KEB Hana Bank) — has announced that it has filed 46 patent applications for business models related to blockchain, business technology news website ZDNet reports on Feb. 13.

KEB Hana Bank, a part of the Hana Financial Group (HFG) — one of the largest bank holding companies in South Korea — has completed 46 patent applications for methods and systems for purchasing overseas products, systems and methods for electronic contracts and methods and systems for providing digital asset services using blockchain.

The publication underlines that some of the filed patents are currently being developed.

In addition, KEB Hana Bank is working on an internet banking service based on blockchain tech that allows for the issuance of IOUs. Han Jun-Seong, a vice president at KEB Hana Bank, said:

“The patent applications are not just about applying blockchain technology into the banking [system]. It is important to connect the new business models and the bank's internal system through a blockchain.”

Banking institutions are among the types of companies that are filing the most significant number of blockchain patents. Bank of America (BoA), the second-largest bank in the United States, was leading in the informal blockchain patent race with a collection of more than 50 applications by fall 2018.

In early February, Cointelegraph reported on a survey conducted by TD Bank that showed distributed ledger technology and blockchain are considered to affect the financial industry positively.