The first Italian commercial transaction with blockchain technology was successful. Unicredit performed it through the we.trade platform, allowing the metal packaging manufacturer Gruppo ASA to purchase a lot of tinplate from one of its suppliers, Steelforce, in turn supported by KBC Bank in Belgium.
"Thanks to the creation of a smart contract on the we.trade platform - reads the note from Unicredit - payment will take place automatically, according to the times agreed directly by the counterparties on the platform, once the buyer has confirmed receipt of the goods, making the considerably faster and more transparent transaction”.
The we.trade platform allows small and medium-sized businesses to look for trusted counterparts with whom to establish business relationships and to have visibility on the status of the transaction and shipment at all times, digitizing the entire process from creating an order to payment. Still within the platform, it is possible for companies to access the financial services made available by banks, such as Bank Payment Undertaking (BPU) in which the buyer's bank provides the seller with an irrevocable commitment to pay the invoice when due and BPU Financing , in which the seller's bank finances the latter, discounting the BPU of which he is the beneficiary.
The we.trade project was born in 2017 from the collaboration between Unicredit and 6 other European banks (Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Société Générale), which formed a consortium which was later joined by Nordea and Santander. The goal is to simplify the financial processes underlying international trade, initially focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises.
After the decision of the consortium banks to set up the "we.trade innovation DAC" company, 2018 other European banks (CaixaBank, Erste Group, Eurobank and UBS) joined the initiative in 4 and will be available on the platform in the coming months . Therefore, the consortium currently brings together 13 European banks active in 14 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Holland, United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
