Thailand’s Kasikornbank announced that it has joined with the Thai unit of IBM in a move to develop distributed ledger services to save costs and quicken up the transaction process, Reuters reported .

Somkid Jiranuntarat, vice chairman of Kasikornbank's technology group told Reuters that the financial institution will be the first Thai bank to apply the blockchain technology and focus on implementing the services in the first half of 2017. He also mentioned that Kasikornbank will have talks with other Thai banks to share the blockchain network.

Using IBM's Hyperledger infrastructure, the blockchain technology will be used to certify original documents. According to the joint statement, there will be a system ‘OriginCert API’, which will be used to certify letters of guarantee (LG). This will help simplify and speed up the LG issuance process for customers.

Earlier in April, the bank stated that it is focusing on the blockchain technology for benefits like reducing costs, verifying and increasing cross-border settlement efficiency. Apart from blockchain, the bank revealed its focus on machine learning, advanced mobile programming, Application Programming Interface (API), among others.