Five Major Spanish Banks Finalize Smart Contracts Payments Trial

The blockchain news today show that five major Spanish banks have finalized their plans for completing a proof-of-concept for payments using smart contracts technology. The multinational banking giant Banco Santander is one of them, along with four other banks, to successfully finalize this concept using distributed ledger technology.

The proof of concept (PoC) was coordinated along with IberPay, which is a company that oversees the Spanish Payment System. A statement published on July 15 shows that IberPay said that the PoC “confirmed the feasibility of applying blockchain technology to the field of payments” and its successful connection to the national payment system.

In that manner, using smart contracts automates the execution and settlement of payments once the certain pre-conditions are met. The Five major Spanish banks include Banco Santander, as well as Banco Sabadell (the fifth largest banking group in the country) and BBVA, Bankia and Caixabank.

Grant Thornton was a person who provided consultancy services to IberPay when testing the PoC using an interbank blockchain network with seven operating nodes, executing more than 20,000 automated immediate transactions.

What we can see in the crypto news reports is an average processing time of 2.5 seconds per completed payment. All of this fosters confidence in its applicability to the real world. Also, IberPay has said that the PoC functioned “with the maximal guarantees of security, efficiency, traceability and integrity, as well as compliance with current regulations.”

As we previously reported, Banco Santander is the leader among these five major Spanish banks, and has been a forerunner in testing and implementing blockchain tech for financial services. Last winter, for example, the bank redeemed a $20 million bond using the public Ethereum blockchain.

Additionally, the Santander bank had issued its first end-to-end blockchain bond using the public network in September 2019. It was also featured in the XRP news for integrating the xCurrent technology by Ripple directly into its global payments services for retail clients. In that manner, it also announced plans to extend its services to Latin America.

All of these plans show that blockchain technology is buzzing and especially beneficial to banks. In Spain, there have been many similar initiatives but this is the one that resulted in a successful trial.