PSCU, a leading Credit Union Service Organization in the United States, and Glenbrook Partners, a payments industry strategy consulting and research firm, have collaborated on a white paper on blockchain technology and its potential for credit unions.

The newly released white paper, “Blockchain and the Credit Union: The Asset Transfer Revolution” is now available for download online.

“We believe this white paper is a giant step towards the ultimate application of blockchain technology in solving multiple operational and logistical challenges facing credit unions today,” said Chuck Fagan, President & CEO of PSCU. “The collective voice of the credit union industry reflected in this research will help shape future use cases for blockchain in our industry. The collaborative effort of the credit unions, industry advocates and partners involved in the CULedger initiative represents the most appropriate approach to achieving greater efficiencies in areas that are central to credit unions’ core business interests.”

Credit Union National Association (CUNA) unveiled the CU Ledger Initiative couple of months back, that aims to create a credit union system-wide “permissioned distributed shared ledger” or blockchain platform, which has the potential to make all types of financial transactions more efficient, fast and secure. The initiative brings together CUNA, Best Innovation Group, the Mountain West Credit Union Association, PSCU and other industry partners to examine blockchain operation and to pilot potentially useful applications.

One key challenge for credit unions is to identify specific blockchain use cases that would benefit the credit union community as a whole. The white paper examines the applicability of blockchain technology to the credit union industry. Glenbrook Partners interviewed credit union leaders from across the country to build a credit union roadmap for each topic. The resulting discussions found a significant awareness of blockchain technology and much ongoing dialogue about the technology’s applicability to the credit union industry.

“Credit unions have good reason to be excited about the potential of blockchain technology,” said George Peabody, Partner at Glenbrook Partners. “It may function as an asset custodian, improve record keeping, support remittance and settlement functions, and even automate contracts. While these are early days in blockchain technology development, the emerging applications based on this new approach could alter how assets of many kinds are transferred and tracked. It’s time to pay attention.”