The Czech core payments platform for banks and fintech firms has adopted Oracle’s blockchain platform to enable facilitate faster, more cost effective and secure payments, especially cross-border. This comes as the European Parliament recently passed the ‘Cross-border euro transfers and currency conversions’ proposal to slash fees on cross-border euro payments between EU countries that are in the euro zone and those that are not.

SDK.finance, who provide a range of payments solutions catered towards either end of the spectrum; fintech start-ups to established banks, have utilised blockchain technology to build trust and cut costs for users of their core payments platform. This was facilitated by Oracle, who securely extend firms’ business processes and applications onto their blockchain platform, promoting the traceability and security inherent in the technology.

The comparatively slower disruption of cross-border payments relative to other financial services was a concern shared by SDK.finance CTO, Pavlo Sidelov, who elaborated:

“Despite the considerable disruption of the financial services industry, cross-border payments are still very slow, the associated fees are expensive, and there is an inherent lack of trust, especially around peer-to-peer payments. We are removing these pain points by providing a platform that drives highly secure, affordable, and fast transactions. Oracle’s enterprise-grade blockchain cloud platform is critical to helping us achieve these goals.”

The partnership is pegged to remove financial intermediaries, and dismantle the time needed for cross-border transactions from days or even weeks to mere seconds, and with it, the associated fees. This is particularly pertinent for banks and fintech firms trading from, or with companies, outside the Eurozone. It has been noted that a EUR 10 cross-border credit transfer from Bulgaria could be subject to a fee of up to EUR24. Given the infeasibility of such a transfer, the European Parliament is seeking to enforce the ‘same charge’ rule, which would see charges for a cross-border credit transfer in euros from Bulgaria, being priced the same as a domestic Bulgarian lev credit transfer.

The partnership between SDK.finance and Oracle looks set to appease parliamentary concerns well before the intended implementation date at the end of 2019.