The European Central Bank (ECB), in a new consultation report, has said that it is investigating the potential of the blockchain and distributed ledger technologies to be used for the different services that it provides to the banking system, Financial News reported.

In the report, “Eurosystem's vision for the future of Europe’s financial market infrastructure”, the ECB says that the technology is currently giving rise to many talks, studies and publications, pointing out that several entities in the industry are already evaluating the impact that such innovations may have on the provision of financial services.

“As part of its vision, the Eurosystem intends to assess their relevance for the different services it provides to the banking communities (payments, securities settlement as well as collateral). This investigation will identify opportunities that these new technologies may provide, as well as the challenges that they create”, the report said.

The announcement, however, is not much surprising as officials from the ECB have spoken out on the topic recently. Yves Mersch, member of the executive board of the European Central Bank (ECB), shared his views on the technology while addressing a Bank of France Conference in Paris on 18th January, in a speech titled “Card payments in Europe – latest trends and challenges”.

“There is the challenge of distributed ledger technologies. These technologies, of which Blockchain is probably the best-known example, can potentially have a profound impact on the whole financial “ecosystem”. Their adoption has the potential to disrupt both the use of “traditional” payment instruments and services and the payments processing industry”, he said.