“Marco!”
“Polo!”
No, you’re not in the swimming pool.
Today a brand-new finance blockchain platform called Marco Polo is conducting its first trades.
The reported transactions were between a German company and a Chinese company – a supplier of pumps and valves used the platform to define the delivery of various hydraulic parts.
Interestingly, Marco Polo did not divulge in a related press release which company was the buyer and which one was the seller, which makes it obviously hard to report the basics of these transactions. However, from looking at reports on the event, we can see that using the blockchain did help the companies in question to avoid time sensitive and costly documentation processes that would have been traditionally required.
The two banks helping to handle the transaction had positive remarks about Marco Polo and blockchain in general.
“The transaction proves that blockchain technology offers our clients a payment undertaking and state-of-the-art financing for trade transactions with both foreign countries and domestically,” said Nikolaus Giesbert, a divisional board member for trade finance and cash management at Commerzbank, according to reporting today from Coindesk.
Ja! Zupa!
As for next steps, spokespersons said the platform wants to hook up with individual company Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to bring even more streamlining to workflows and transactions. Look to the platform’s web site for more data on which parts of a greater WERP would be targeted and how blockchain would be applied.
Here we see blockchain at work in industry, which is important for people who are wondering what the utility of blockchain really is. We are more likely to see this sort of widespread adoption than we are to see individual consumers carrying around bits of digital Bitcoin in their wallets. However, it’s all part of a greater picture – investors are looking to weigh the scope of adoption as well as the segmentation – which industries are moving most quickly toward crypto and blockchain, and which ones are keeping these new technologies at arm’s length.
