Trafigura, Natixis and IBM are working together on a blockchain solution for commodity trade finance. Rodney Malcolm, chief financial officer of Trafigura's North American business, explains why.
When French bank Natixis and information technology firm IBM started talking about blockchain, the topic resonated very well for Trafigura's North American chief financial officer on the crude and gasoline side. Rodney Malcolm, who had in a previous job worked to build a system organizing a marketplace based on more standard processes, quickly recognized how digital ledger technology could work for Trafigura. The commodities trader handles large numbers of relatively small transactions with oil producers daily, along with repetitive activities such as sending product in batches along pipelines."My background has more exposure to gas and power trading in the US that utilize delivery systems with more standardized processes," Malcolm told Fastmarkets in an interview. "I'm very sensitive to process improvements on trade fulfillment and the physical fulfillment of our underlying crude and gasoline transactions."The...