National Australia Bank has formed a strategic alliance with Bank Leumi of Israel and CIBC Bank of Canada which will result in the sharing of some design and development costs for new banking products and digital services and provide access to each other’s fintech relationships.
As part of the “international banking innovation alliance”, NAB and CIBC have conducted a technical trial of blockchain technology that has resulted in real dollars being moved between the banks over the Ripple distributed ledger.
The trial with Ripple involved NAB moving $10 (£7.70) between one of its accounts in Australia and a CIBC account in Canada. The transfer was initiated and the funds received in less than ten seconds. This compares to international fund transfers using current technology taking around a day between banks with close relationships and potentially several days if such relationships do not exist, adding cost and risks.
