The global blockchain consortium R3 uniting over 40 major banks and financial organisations welcomes its first Chinese member, Ping An Financial Services Group.

Ping An (meaning in Chinese “safe and well”), originally founded as an insurance company, is now an important financial group uniting a variety of insurance, banking and financial subsidiaries. It is represented in over 150 countries. The new partnership with R3 will allow it to experiment with the blockchain technology. To put it in the words of Jessica Tan, COO of the company:

“Ping An Group has always been at the forefront of using technology and innovation in its banking, insurance, investment and internet businesses. We are excited about joining R3 and look forward to developing and using blockchain technology to create a more efficient way of managing financial assets digitally end-to-end.”

New partnership opens the world’s second economy to the consortium. According to David Rutter, CEO of R3,

“The addition of Ping An is another important milestone for R3 as we develop our member network to represent the interests of banks and financial institutions operating in markets around the globe. We look forward to collaborating with them in our lab to develop the next generation in financial services technology.”

The R3 consortium was created in September 2015 when Barclays, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and others – nine of the world’s largest banks in total – formed a partnership to explore blockchain, apply the technology to interbank communications and trading process and develop blockchain-based solutions for the global financial industry.

In March 2016, R3 announced the completion of the trial of five cloud-based blockchain solutions. They were successfully tested by all the banks participating in the consortium. In April, the consortium presented Corda, a new technology for financial institutions different from blockchain, which it had been working on for the previous 6 months.

Over time, new banks have been joining the consortium including such giants as HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Société Générale and Mitsubishi UFJ. In April, Itaú Unibanco beсame the first Latin American member of R3.

Alexey Tereshchenko