Emirates NBD, one of the largest banking groups in the Gulf, is partnering with the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates on a blockchain trial focused on bank cheque fraud. The bank has been testing several technologies for payments applications and had joined a research and information-sharing effort backed by the Dubai government. Ali Sajwani, CIO, Emirates NBD, said these early efforts yielded key insights, namely that the technology already has some real-world applications for the short to medium term. Under a proposed system, the beneficiary of a cheque (as well as the bank) would be able to check whether it is valid, relying on a blockchain as a tamper-proof verification layer. Sajwani also mentioned about the bank’s participation in a cross-border payments trial with India’s ICICI Bank. He said this test involved transmitting a transaction between an ICICI Bank branch in Mumbai to an Emirates NBD branch in Dubai, recording on a distributed ledger.
