Indian Central Bank’s Research Arm will Launch a Blockchain Platform

The research arm of India’s central bank is developing a new blockchain platform for multiple banking applications in the country.Established by the central bank, the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) is the Indian central bank’s research arm and the foremost banking research institute in the country.As earlier this year, the research institute has been studying blockchain technology for over two years. In a whitepaper published at the time, a team of researchers from the institute bullishly claimed “we recommend that the time is ripe for its adoption in India.” Indeed, such was the central bank institute’s enthusiasm that it has determined that blockchain technology had already “matured enough” to enable the digitization of India’s fiat currency, the rupee.Now, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) institute is developing a blockchain platform to enable a range of applications in the banking industry. According to the Hindu Business Line, the central bank, the IDRBT and multiple FinTech players will all work together to develop the platform toward commercial applications of blockchain technology in India’s banking sector.Speaking at an event on Friday, IDRBT director AS Ramasastri stated:

We will be launching this [blockchain] platform very soon.

The report further revealed that IDRBT had filed for three patents on technology protocols and solutions related to cybersecurity, analytics and cloud computing. The research arm has already laid out a number of for blockchain technology in the country.Meanwhile, Indian government-owned State Bank of India (SBI), India’s largest bank, in establishing a financial blockchain consortium earlier this year. The first banking working group of its kind in the country, ‘BankChain’ sees the country’s largest public and private banks as participants alongside technology partners like Microsoft. The consortium completed its first project in June, enabling its members to share KYC, AML and CTF (Know Your Customer, Anti Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism) details over a blockchain