Poland’s PKO Bank Polski has implemented blockchain technology, which is allowing the bank's customers to receive electronically the amended product terms and conditions.
Image: PKO Bank Polski implements blockchain-based communication.Photo: Courtesy of Markus Spiske/Unsplash.
The new blockchain solution was developed with KIR, a key entity of the Polish payment system infrastructure and in cooperation with several other technology partners, all over the world.
The bank has been working with Coinfirm, a Polish-British company working on RegTech. The cooperation resulted in a new platform known as Trudatum and is part of the program, ‘Let’s Fintech with PKO Bank Polski!’
As per the Polish bank, changes in product regulations which are communicated to clients are based on European and national PSD2 regulations. The regulations provide the rules of access to external entities to functions and banking data.
The electronic communication from the bank will be sent to bank customers who consented for this form of information transfer. The bank stated that it is easier to handle, store and archive digital communication than analogue. Clients who have not consented for digital communication will receive traditional correspondence.
PKO Bank Polski management board vice president Adam Marciniak said: “Blockchain offers huge potential to increase competitiveness of the Polish banking sector. This is a relatively new technology for which further applications are constantly found worldwide.
“PKO Bank Polski is successfully implementing the digitization focused strategy, and full implementation of the blockchain-based solution is yet another step along the path we mapped out, strengthening our position as a technological leader in the Polish banking sector. We are working on further innovative solutions involving external partners to develop modern banking in Poland.”
The Polish bank’s customers will receive a 64-character unique hash identifier of the document and the link to the bank’s website. Bank customers can to go the website and authenticate whether or not the correspondence is authentic and when was the last time it was modified.
Coinfirm CEO and co-founder Paweł Kuskowski said: “Implementation of Trudatum in such a large institution as PKO Bank Polski is a breakthrough on a global scale. This shows that Polish financial industry is still open to innovation and sets international trends. We can be proud of how quickly and efficiently new technologies are implemented.
“Working with the PKO Bank Polski team is a great pleasure – we move quickly and efficiently from pilot implementations to the ever-wider use of technology. It is a great satisfaction that we are making life easier for millions of bank customers and contribute to reducing the bank’s costs.”