Accenture report has found that nine out of 10 banking professionals surveyed at major U.S., European and Canadian commercial banks are exploring the potentials and use cases of blockchain technology for payments and their blockchain-powered initiatives are designed to reduce costs, speed payments, reduce errors and drive new revenues.

The report titled ‘Blockchain Technology: How banks are building a real-time global payment network’ is based on the survey of 32 top commercial banking professionals, designed to access their views on blockchain potentials to transform the payments business. The survey showed that 30% of banks are in the advanced stages of adopting blockchain technology for payments – with executives indicating that they are either ‘at the forefront of the revolution’ or ‘engaged in production implementation’. 70% of banks are still in early adoption stage with 30 percent ‘involved in proof-of-concepts with other companies,’ 27 percent still ‘formulating a strategy’ and 13 percent ‘looking into the technology’, according to the release.

“Cross-border payments are ripe for innovation using blockchain and distributed ledger technologies,” said Richard Lumb, group chief executive – Financial Services at Accenture. “The technology could resolve inefficiencies and friction that have long driven up the costs – and the time – required to move money around the world. Blockchain has proven its scalability to support such infrastructure. And as the industry sets its focus on developing the networks, business processes and standards needed to run these systems, payments could be one of the first major proving grounds for enterprise blockchain adoption.”

The survey found that the key prevalent use cases and potentials of blockchain technology within payments are intra-bank cross-border transfers with a focus on cross-border remittances, corporate payments, and inter-bank cross-border transfers.

The surveyed executives said that blockchain technology will help lower frictional and administrative costs, create quicker settlement time with fewer errors and exceptions, and provide greenfield revenue opportunities. The survey also found out that most of the executives recognize the challenges associated with integrating and implementing the distributed ledger technology.

“For many executives, the value proposition for blockchain is not yet clear enough and top decision-makers have insufficient understanding of the technology. Providing education to employees and executives continues to be critical for the near-term. But the broad success of blockchain in payments hinges upon industry collaboration to create supporting networks that include banks and non-banks,” Richard Meszaros, Connected Commerce lead in Accenture Digital and co-author of the report, said.