Applying Digital Ledger Technology to Revolutionize Global Trade Finance

Student: Om Neelay, 2017-2018

Distributed Ledger Technology offers the compelling opportunity for Financial Technology companies to manage a global network of dispersed participants as they move digital assets through ordered transactions. This blockchain technology is especially useful in the Global Trade Finance business segment, where buyers and suppliers interact in a marketplace to negotiate purchase orders, arranging shipment between continents, validate invoices representing the goods, and settle all due payments. An important part of this Trade Finance on blockchain use case is the validation that is a seller is a legitimate company with a known identity history and has good financial standing. Banks perform this validation in a process called Supplier Know Your Customer (KYC). This project will research the Trade Finance Supplier KYC arena and perform a deeper dive into three companies assisting banks with this identity management service across a sampling of three suppliers each in three different geographic market zones.