Bank of New York Mellon is starting to experiment with the blockchain. Arun Battu, a senior developer at the bank, is working with the public ledger technology to create an application for the financial institution.
The bank’s Chief Information Officer, Suresh Kumar, confirmed its blockchain experiments to CIO Journal, saying
Currently, the BNY Mellon senior developer Arun Battu is working to build an application using open source code from Bitcoin.org. He is trying to introduce the security advantages of bitcoin into the bank’s internal network.
Suresh Kumar stated that the bank plans to use bitcoins (which he calls BK coins) as an incentive for developers and marketing managers. They might receive some bitcoin for a successful app or an extra article and later exchange them “for gifts, vouchers, cards, and other perks”.
Bank of New York Mellon is not the first financial institution to explore the dangerous waters of bitcoin technology. Several day earlier, UBS, a major Swiss bank, made public its plan to open a technology lab to explore the potential uses of the blockchain in the financial industry.
The project will run at the Canary Wharf in London, starting this April. Members of the research team will look at new solutions that the blockchain can offer to the financial industry, operating “in a more efficient and cost-effective way”.
At the end of March, the London-based Barclays business accelerator accepted Safello, a company that uses bitcoin. Credit Suisse published an article introducing their clients to bitcoin. Some less prominent banks have already started to work with prominent bitcoin companies: the Estonian bank LHV supports Coinbase and Coinfloor operations in Europe and is investigating possible uses of Colored Coins.
