The Canada’s largest bank will use Ripple infrastructure in order to elaborate a prototype distributed ledger-based system.

The information was revealed in a recent report published by Deloitte University Press. The report is called “Blockchain: Democratized trust” and explores the areas and individual cases where blockchain technology can serve as “a secure, transparent, immutable repository of truth.” In the section "Establishing trust in real time" it describes the case of RBC.

According to the paper, two years ago RBC started to search for solutions to increase the efficiency of payment transactions and lower operational costs. The first aim was to fasten cross-border payments by enabling payment settlement in near-real time.

The choice of Ripple as a provider for technological services is explained by its ability to connect banks directly via its distributed technology and to carry out immediate transactions. Among other factors, the report cites Ripple’s potential to mitigate fraud as well as different risks such as credit and counterparty ones. The report states that RBC and Ripple are now working on “a limited-production proof of concept.”

At the same time, the Royal Bank of Canada also considers the potential of other distributed ledger uses. The report provides the example of a loyalty programme creation that it aims at explaining customers via distributed ledger the rewards and extra points they get using RBC products.

As Eddy Ortiz, RBC’s Vice President for Solution, Acceleration and Innovation points out, “Our customers will be able to see their points accrue each time they use their RBC credit card. And the reward points become like liquid cash, enabled by blockchain.”

Canada is known as a country well-disposed towards cryptocurrencies. On 22 January 2016, the hundredth Canadian BTM was installed in Edmonton, Canada's fifth-largest municipality. Moreover, Canada was the country where the first ever BTM was installed: on 28 October 2013 the Robocoin company set it up in Vancouver.

Anna Lavinskaya