The flower blooms on the other shore: China Minsheng Bank, the third traditional bank in mainland China to join R3

Reporter: Lydia

On this day last year, there were 25 banks joining the R3 blockchain alliance, but there were no domestic banks.

After many years, the flowers on the other shore bloom!

Today, China Minsheng Bank officially joined R3, becoming the third traditional banking institution in mainland China to join the R3 blockchain alliance after China Ping An and China Merchants Bank.

Currently, the R3 blockchain alliance includes more than 60 large international financial institutions such as Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, ING, and Citigroup. Not long ago, the alliance released Corda, a distributed ledger platform for financial institutions, which is used to record, manage and synchronize financial agreements between regulated financial institutions.

In an email welcoming Minsheng Bank, the R3 blockchain alliance wrote:

“We are delighted that China Minsheng Bank has become a member of the R3 blockchain consortium. The consortium will continue to collaborate and work hard to research and develop the next generation of financial services transaction networks based on distributed ledger technology.”

It can be said that the 25 international banks joined R3 last year amid controversy, but today the situation is clear. Although the conservative traditional Chinese banking and financial industry has always been abiding by the rules, it has to pay attention to and pay attention to the disruptive technology today. It is always right to keep up with the pace of international trends, at least you won't fall behind and get beaten.

As a pilot for China's banking reform, Minsheng Bank has been paying attention to emerging technologies for many years and actively exploring the integration of the financial industry and new technologies. "The future of banks must be based on the Internet, cloud big data as the driving force, and intelligence as the direction, developing in the direction of technology companies, thereby realizing the transformation of traditional banks." Hong Qi, chairman of Minsheng Bank, said that the bank is focusing on cultivating its own team of scientific and technological talents, big data talents and new technology engineers.

"Blockchain, a new technology that combines the technology of cryptographic distributed databases with market technology, is likely to contribute to the formation of new financial formats." Zheng Wanchun, president of China Minsheng Bank, pointed out at the 2016 China Financial Annual Forum that currently large global banks represented by Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and JPMorgan Chase are actively deploying blockchain, and China Minsheng Bank has also dared to enter this field and has achieved positive results.

It is reported that Minsheng Bank has built a blockchain service cloud platform and conducted in-depth research on blockchain consensus algorithms, smart contracts, transaction accounting, data transmission, smart wallets, decentralized applications and other aspects.

Minsheng Bank's joining the R3 blockchain alliance will not only help the bank to work closely with large international financial institutions to jointly explore business models based on blockchain distributed ledger technology, but also help improve Minsheng Bank's research level and application capabilities of new technologies.

As a disruptive innovative technology, blockchain technology has a lot of room for development, but also a lot of uncertainty. It may bring opportunities for the transformation of the banking industry, but it may also bring greater impact to the development of the banking industry. In any case, the banking industry needs to continue to explore and think about how blockchain affects major changes in the banking industry in practice. It is a foregone conclusion that all parties will join the blockchain research alliance.