The Columbian central bank has entered into an agreement with R3, an enterprise software firm leading a blockchain consortium of major financial institutions, to experiment and test distributed ledger technology (DLT).

With this, the Banco de la República has become the first Latin American central bank to accept R3’s invitation to evaluate the benefits of blockchain technology.

“Recognising that our members operate in one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world, since launching R3 we have made engagement with regulators and central banks a top priority. A collaborative public-private working model is crucial to speeding up the deployment of enterprise DLT platforms such as Corda. We look forward to working together with Banco de la República Colombia,” David Rutter, CEO of R3, said.

R3 is already collaborating with a number of central banks and regulators across the globe, who collaborate with the consortium members to develop commercial applications for the financial services industry that leverage the appropriate elements of DLT.

Members work closely with R3 to continue the development of Corda, an open source distributed ledger platform for recording, managing and synchronising financial agreements. R3 said that Corda is inspired by and captures the benefits of blockchain systems, but with design choices that make it able to meet the needs of regulated financial institutions.

"The emergence of blockchain as a mechanism to have decentralised, secure and synchronised databases has promoted the emergence of platforms such as Corda from R3. It is in our interest to evaluate the benefits of this technology for the safe and efficient management of the exchange of securities in the Colombian financial system,” Fabio M. Pinzón, Technology Director at Banco de la República Colombia, said.

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