A US consortium exploring potential use cases for distributed ledger technology in the credit union industry is set to conduct its first live demonstration of a digital identity service next week.
A collaborative effort among Cuna, Best Innovation Group, the Mountain West Credit Union Association, PSCU and other industry partners, CULedger is a "research-to-action" initiative that is investigating the viability of a private, permissioned distributed ledger (DLT) that can be used by credit unions.
The consortium is working with Evernym, which developed a public permissioned ledger network designed exclusively for self-sovereign identity called Sovrin.
In a paper highlighting progress, MWCUA vice president of innovation and product development Rick Cranston says that out-of-band authentication for customers phoning in to the call centre provides "the most compelling first use case for a Proof of Concept to demonstrate these technologies, and conducted research into the design and implementation."
A demo to prove the technical feasibility of the project will get its first outing at at the upcoming National CEO Roundtable in Tucson.
Cranston also highlights multiple potential use cases for smart contracts in delivering services to credit union members, from real estate titles to mortgages and remittances.
"Smart contracts will do several important things for the credit union industry but there is one very big thing it will do," he writes. "Smart contracts will save credit unions lots and lots of money."