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Kaleido > Case Studies > Project i2i: An Enterprise Ethereum payment network driving financial inclusion in the Philippines
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Project i2i: An Enterprise Ethereum payment network driving financial inclusion in the Philippines

Technology Category
  • Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Blockchain
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
Applicable Industries
  • Finance & Insurance
Applicable Functions
  • Business Operation
Use Cases
  • Asset Health Management (AHM)
  • Fleet Management
  • Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
  • Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
  • Data Science Services
  • System Integration
The Challenge
The Philippines is a rapidly emerging economy with a population of over 100 million. However, one third of its population lives on less than $2 a day and remains unbanked. This means that 35 million Filipinos have severely limited access to both the domestic and global financial ecosystems. This is a significant problem when up to 10% of the Philippines’ GDP is made up of international remittances sent from overseas workers to family members across the country. Unionbank of the Philippines, one of the largest banking institutions in the country, sought to tackle this challenge by partnering with ConsenSys Solutions, Microsoft Azure, Kaleido, Amazon AWS, ConsenSys Diligence and seven rural Philippine banks to create an inter-rural bank payment platform using Enterprise Ethereum. The challenge of facilitating financial inclusion was to encourage the financially excluded, traditionally located in rural areas, to begin and to continue to engage with financial systems. The key to this engagement was determined to be a partnership with the existing 492 rural banks located amid small rural communities across the country.
About The Customer
Unionbank of the Philippines is one of the largest banking institutions in the country. It is committed to driving financial inclusion in the Philippines, a rapidly emerging economy with a population of over 100 million. However, one third of its population lives on less than $2 a day and remains unbanked. This means that 35 million Filipinos have severely limited access to both the domestic and global financial ecosystems. This is a significant problem when up to 10% of the Philippines’ GDP is made up of international remittances sent from overseas workers to family members across the country. Unionbank sought to tackle this challenge by partnering with ConsenSys Solutions, Microsoft Azure, Kaleido, Amazon AWS, ConsenSys Diligence and seven rural Philippine banks to create an inter-rural bank payment platform using Enterprise Ethereum.
The Solution
In a pilot-project partnership with seven rural banks, Unionbank worked with ConsenSys Solutions to build a decentralized, cost-efficient, approximately real-time inter-rural bank payment platform to connect rural banks to each other and to national commercial banks, using Enterprise Ethereum. This effectively brings these rural banks into the domestic financial system and increases inclusion access to the communities in which they operate. The Project i2i platform consists of a web API and an Ethereum blockchain back-end. The API allows a bank’s API and/or core banking system to connect to the blockchain back-end. The connection handles key management and allows participants to construct and send signed transactions to the smart contract running on a permissioned Quorum blockchain deployed through ConsenSys’ Kaleido platform.
Operational Impact
  • Creation of a verified chronological digital ledger of remittances that enables immediate visibility of cash inflows and outflows across each partner bank
  • Streamline of banking operations - eliminating at least 20 intermediation steps required to complete a domestic transaction - into one seamless process
  • Faster transaction times and lower costs
Quantitative Benefit
  • The i2i platform is scheduled to launch in Q1.2019 with 130 rural bank partners, aiming to service millions of previously unbanked Filipinos.
  • Project i2i has received clearance and support from the central bank of the Philippines (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) to operate as the country’s first Ethereum-based payment network for domestic remittances.

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