Partnering with Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism (DET), Mashreq Bank has joined the norbloc-powered UAE KYC Blockchain Platform initiative, a national ecosystem for the exchange of verified KYC data between licensing authorities and financial institutions.
The ecosystem enables companies setting up operations in the UAE to instantly open a bank account, while also improving customer quality data.
The acting CEO for Business Registration and Licensing sector at the DET, Mohammed Hassan AlShehhi, said: “We focus on enhancing ease of doing business in Dubai and supporting the smart transformation of the emirate’s economy.
Our partnership with banks to launch the first KYC blockchain platform in the UAE is an important step towards continuing to attract investors to this market.”
The platform offers a digital ‘Instant Bank Account’ functionality, allowing faster and less cumbersome onboarding journey with banks and significantly improving the experience of new investors looking to establish themselves in the UAE
– Mohammed Hassan AlShehhi
The project launched in February 2020, which currently involves 13 entities, is powered by norbloc, a global leader in enterprise blockchain technologies that enables sharing of regulated data.
Mashreq Bank joins a group of four banks that are currently live on the network, including Emirates NBD, Commercial Bank of Dubai (CBD), Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB), and HSBC.
More banks and licensing authorities are currently in implementation phase and will be announced soon.
We intend to expand and accelerate the initiative to include more financial institutions and licensing authorities as well as additional use cases including SME funding, investor screening, and integration with additional trusted data sources.
– Mohammed Hassan AlShehhi
The UAE KYC Blockchain Platform will lead to significantly improved customer data quality in the UAE, which will underpin the future expansion of the network and its evolving use as a comprehensive customer data ecosystem.
The CEO and co-founder of norbloc, Astyanax Kanakakis, concluded: “Mashreq Bank was one of the earliest financial institutions in the UAE to understand the potential and importance of building a KYC utility that allows for data sharing, and one of the first to commit to this effort together with the DIFC.
“Both of these important entities are now combining efforts with DET and the other banks and free zones to create an even more powerful and inclusive ecosystem, and strengthening the network effects of improved data quality, efficiency gains and better customer service we are seeing as a result.”
Read the whole article by Anup Oommen for Arabian Business here
