Poland-based PKO Bank Polski has completed work on what it claims is the biggest client-facing blockchain implementation globally.
The bank has teamed up with British-Polish startup Coinfirm to deploy a distributed ledger of client transaction and agreements on Coinfirm's Trudatum blockchain platform, enabling 5 million customers to verify electronic documents and product regualtions sent by the bank.
The project was first announced in March following almost a year of testing and is now set to be rolled out across almost half of its client base that opted in to the new form of information transfer.
The 5 million clients will receive digital terms and conditions for banking products in the coming days, says the bank.
Both the bank and the vendor hope it will help to promote the country's fintech ambitions as well as demonstrating that the blockchain can be deployed on projects of scale.
“Blockchain has the potential to increase the competiveness of the Polish banking sector,” said Adam Marciniak, vice president of the bank’s management board. “PKO Bank Polski is successfully implementing a strategy focused on digitisation, and the implementation of blockchain based solutions is part of this process and should strengthen our position as a technological leader in Polish banking.”
“The implementation of Trudatum in an institution as large as PKO is a breakthrough on a global scale,” said Paweł Kuskowski, Coinfirm’s CEO and co-founder. “This demonstrates that the Polish financial sector is open to innovation and wants to become an international trend setter.”