Kai Yee Goh — CEO of ZeroBank: “Blockchain and the future of bank services”

Blockchain technology has the potential to change the way we operate in various industries and all-round aspects of our lives, including financial services and transactions. In the event series of blockchain technology that took place in Ho Chi Minh City, more than 1,500 people participated with 30 speakers discussing the cutting-edge developments of blockchain in the world and its potential in the future as well.

Answering reporters in Blockchain Festival, Tyler Wu, Managing Director of Houbi Pro, one of the world’s top three cryptocurrency exchanges and also the event organizer, said: “Blockchain can be applied in many different fields. We are also working to discover the full potential of this technology and how to apply blockchain properly in each specific market, not in a dogmatic way”.

Blockchain provides many benefits in the banking and financial services sectors, its reliability (i). Owing to the decentralized storage of transactional data and the impossibility of changing information in transaction history, customers can be assured that what stored by blockchains is very reliable. Secondly, by blockchain, investors have equal control over the “general ledger”, thus ensuring transaction integrity. (ii). And finally, this technology allows money to be exchanged quickly, whether it’s day or night, which helps to save costs while still delivering high efficiency (iii). Moreover, blockchain also contributes to anti-money laundering or non-transparent transactions, due to the fact that all transaction traces can be stored on the blockchain and those never change.

Mr. Kai, CEO of ZeroBank

According to Kai Yee, who has more than 25 years of experience in the international money transfer and was the former senior manager at international monetary organizations such as United Financial Group, Paypal, Western Union and Transfast and now is the co-founder and CEO of ZeroBank, considered blockchain applications in the financial and banking sector as an inevitable scenario; banks are beginning to apply this technology to bring benefits to customers, reduce costs and time to check and carry out transactions, especially international or inter-bank transactions to enhance transparency.

He also said that the ZeroBank project is an example of this technology application when it is a platform to connect users via non-commercial money transfer and currency exchange services, enabling transactions to be carried out in the global scale immediately through a Peer-to-Peer system based on the combination of blockchain technology, smart contracts and sharing economy system. The ZeroBank platform allows the senders and the currency exchangers to carry out direct transactions at any time, at the lowest cost through the removal of high cost and complication of the traditional system applied by intermediaries like banks and money transfer companies today.

Mr Kai — CEO and Mr Bao Ly — CTO of ZeroBank in the blockchain event presented by Houbi.pro

The faster the blockchain is attained and adopted, the more advantages of price and technology security the investors have. However, blockchain also takes time and fund to deploy as the conditions of any other technologies. In addition to technological systems that are powerful enough to verify and store transactions, overcoming customer’s prejudices to cryptocurrency or adapting to changes in the legal system, enterprises and investors should build a well rounded and experienced IT team for working with cryptocurrency and blockchain. Mr. Kai said that such a technology team should be, then, able to research and design optimal applicable systems that ensure security and prevent money laundering or illegal transfers.