Absa and blockchain: A Journey of innovation and learning

Absa is one of Africa's largest diversified financial services groups, offering a range of banking, insurance, wealth management and investment solutions to individuals, businesses and institutions across the continent. As a leading African bank, Absa is committed to driving innovation and digital transformation in the financial sector, with a focus on delivering customer-centric solutions that are convenient, secure and affordable.

One of the key areas of innovation that Absa has been leveraging is blockchain technology, which has the potential to revolutionize various aspects of the financial industry, such as payments, remittances, trade finance, identity verification and asset tokenization, by offering faster, cheaper and more transparent transactions, as well as enhanced security and trust.

Absa's journey with blockchain

Absa's journey with blockchain started in 2016 when it became the first bank in Africa to join the R3 Consortium, which was established with numerous global banks to collaborate on developing blockchain solutions for the financial industry. In that same year, Absa facilitated one of the first blockchain-enabled cross-border trade finance transactions, which proved that technology can dramatically reduce the time, effort and the cost of trade transactions.

After a brief pause in working with blockchain technologies while the bank safely separated the Absa business from Barclays Plc, Absa picked up again in 2020 to create a blockchain-based digital identity platform that enables the verification and sharing of identity information among Absa and its customers and partners.

Absa was one of several participants in the South Africa Reserve Bank (SARB) project Khokha, where Absa developed a cross-border payment solution with blockchain. This was pivotal in Absa's starting to further develop skills and infrastructure to learn and scale ambitions. Creating awareness and educating colleagues on blockchain use cases and opportunities has accelerated in the last 18 months.