Ping An's OneConnect has partnered with UBX, the wholly-owned fintech subsidiary of Union Bank of the Philippines, to build the country's first blockchain-enabled platform to meet the banking needs of micro, small and medium enterprises
The partnership centres around a financing platform that leverages OneConnect's facial recognition technology, micro-expression interviewing tech, and big data-enabled artificial intelligence to cover business finance needs, such as multi-channel loan applications, credit assessment, loan disbursement, and anti-fraud checking.
For supply chain finance, OneConnect's Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform will be deployed to introduce paperless contracts, compliance verification and transferrable e-payment undertakings.
The blockchain-enabled digital platform will be operational by end-2019, and will be made rolled out commercially to the country's SME sector by 2020, says Tan Bin Ru, CEO (Southeast Asia) of OneConnect Financial Technology.
"We believe there is huge economic potential in the MSME sector and we have confidence in how our technology can help enterprising businesses leapfrog into better ways of doing business," she says. "We are excited to be partnering with UBX in the Philippines, because we share the same vision of how technology can empower communities that traditionally cannot be reached."