Standard Chartered, Huawei partner over IoT solution aiming to transform corporate communication with banks

Novel fintech solutions continue to expand into new territories, with the latest example provided by Standard Chartered and Huawei. The companies have unveiled a partnership involving the development of an Internet of Things (IoT) powered solution that aims to revolutionize the way corporates communicate with banks for financing or payments.

Instead of having to manually initiate transactions through paper-based or emailed instructions, corporates’ and banks systems will be able to ‘speak’ to each other in real-time, triggering financing or payment instructions through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The solution combines IoT and cloud capabilities so the bank will be able to track the movement of goods on a real-time basis, reducing operational risks and providing reliable data that can be used in financing decisions.

The IoT solution leverages the capabilities of Huawei’s OceanConnect, an open platform built on IoT, cloud computing, and Big Data technologies. With a cloud-based unified IoT device management capability as its core, it links up with connected devices and collects real-time data through a series of agents while providing user-friendly open APIs to application developers to design and orchestrate the business process.

Standard Chartered has been actively working with tech companies to co-develop solutions to improve client experience and increase efficiency. In August this year, for instance, Standard Chartered announced a partnership with Siemens Financial Services, the financing arm of Siemens, and TradeIX, a digital trade provider, to carry out a client pilot to create an end-to-end blockchain-based smart guarantees proposition in trade finance.

The goal of the project is to transform the traditionally paper intensive Bank Guarantees business. The joint effort represents the first blockchain client pilot that fully digitizes the process, from initiation of the bank guarantee to the claim handling. This solution is set to enable Siemens to digitize its guarantee process for customers with large transaction volumes in the future, spanning issuance, amendments and claims, eliminating the multiple touch-points and inefficiencies which are typical of the rather cumbersome process today.

Standard Chartered notes that, in order to foster innovation and access tech trends and start-ups in North Asia, it opened its eXellerator innovation laboratory in Hong Kong earlier this year, complementing the eXellerator laboratory in Singapore.