On May 25, 2017, the Spanish wholesale bank Cecabank and professional services firm Grant Thornton LLP announced the formation of a Spanish blockchain consortium that will explore Ethereum and Hyperledger-based distributed ledger technology. The consortium currently makes up 33% of the Spanish banking sector.
The first project that the consortium plans to work on is developing a tool to address money laundering. The Ethereum ecosystem has created a favorable environment for use-case research and the nature of blockchain technology's immutable record lends itself well to the application of KYC protocol and AML measures.
Jaime Manzano, Head of Reporting, Operational Management and Banking Training Services at Cecabank, said the consortium will give the bank a "privileged position on the market, since we will be the first in effect to work with this technology, in a cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary environment."
Manzano went on to explain:
"Employees of all our functional areas are not only going to gain an in-depth understanding of the technology, but also of all the new features that arise, which is indispensable, considering the momentum for constant progress maintained by blockchain."
