South Korean financial firm joins blockchain group R3

Hana Financial Group, a large bank holding company specializing in a variety of financial services, has joined the financial blockchain consortium led by R3.

Hana Financial Group is the first South Korean financial institution to join global private blockchain consortium R3.

According to The Korea Herald, the financial group intends to apply blockchain technology to contracting services including global transactions and security protection.

The group used this technology because it is an innovation in distributed databases rather than simple centralized databases. The company said that manipulation, tampering and hacking can be effectively prevented by this new technology.

Currently, many financial industries (including banks, stock exchanges, and even central banks) play an important role in the global economy, and they have begun to pay attention to blockchain innovation technology.

In a press release, Hana Financial Group said:

Hana Financial will use blockchain technology to further the company's global expansion strategy.

In addition, the South Korean company also revealed that distributed ledger technology, which is more efficient and cost-effective than traditional financial systems, is another reason for the company to join R3.

More and more Asian financial companies and banks have begun to study blockchain solutions. Japanese bank Mizuho Financial Group recently announced a partnership with IT provider Cognizant to build a distributed ledger solution to securely record Mizuho's files around the world.

Another Japanese bank, SBI Sumishin Net Bank Ltd, has partnered with several Japanese technology startups to develop a proof-of-concept (POC) blockchain solution.

In December 2015, Singapore’s DBS Bank announced a successful trial of a ledger ledger for financial trade in collaboration with London’s Standard Chartered Bank. The announcement marked one of the early examples of banks outside of the R3 group collaborating to develop a proof-of-concept ledger ledger.