Austrac Trailing Blockchain To Automate Funds Transfer

The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (Austrac) is a government financial intelligence agency which is reportedly trialing blockchain technology to automate funds transfer instructions by institutions. The business tech news media ZDNet published the same on 24th Feb. Austrac has partnered with the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne in order to develop the particular prototype for the trial the use of smart contract and blockchain technology which can help entities to automate reporting of international funds transfer instructions to regulators. According to the ZDNet, banks, remitters and casinos are the reporting entities.

Counter-Terrorism Financing and Anti-Money Laundering Act of Australia made it compulsory for institutions or specific categories of individuals like payer, sender and beneficiary institution who are involved in a cross-border transfer of funds. The trial began in December 2018 and will probably run for a year. According to the article, Swinburne has recently launched Blockchain Center of Excellence in last month partnering with Paris-headquartered multinational consultancy firm Capgemini.

The center will work with Capgemini in a joint venture in order to develop blockchain solutions from PoC to production, Blockchain Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Melbourne. The deputy vice-chancellor of research and development at Swinburne, Aleksandar Subic told ZDNet:
“We see this technology as the key digital innovation platform supporting global supply chains, intellectual property, and trade across a range of industry sectors in the future.”

Swinburne also partnered with ArtChain Global at the beginning of the year 2018 in an attempt to implement IoT as well as blockchain technologies to grow the global art trade industry. ArtChain Global is a blockchain and artificial intelligence registry platform, according to ZDNet.

A licensing framework for domestic cryptocurrency exchanges was launched by Austrac in April 2018. It requires traders to register and obey Anti-Money Laundering rules and Know-Your-Customer checks. Tech giant IBM announced its Hyperledger-powered blockchain from Melbourne-based data center at the beginning of Feb. It will enable the enterprises to run their applications over the company’s cloud.