For the past two years, blockchain is the innovation everyone has been talking about. Roughly $3 billion[1] has been invested in this technology over the period. Some of the world’s major financial institutions have also formed several consortiums to explore its potential. RCI Bank and Services has joined two of them. But concretely, what is blockchain?
Think of it as a ledger or register, shared by all stakeholders, with no intermediary. Everyone can sign in and make transactions freely, in a secure and transparent manner, and without a central control body.
Secure how? A transaction can be taken into account only on the basis of a consensus among the majority of the blockchain participants.
Transparent how? Each individual has a copy of the register and can access all the transactions made since its creation (Blockchain.info). And so any intentional alteration (or not) made to the register is automatically and immediately rejected by the network.
Blockchain is one of the components of the innovation strategy of RCI Bank and Services. That is why we have enlisted in the global effort to develop this technology. In recent months, RCI Bank and Services has joined two consortiums set up specifically to do research on blockchain: R3 LRC and Labchain, of the Caisse des dépôts. Initiatives are also being carried in parallel, independently of these consortiums. They are like exploratory “sprints” aimed at identifying concrete uses for this technology – in connected vehicles, at car dealers, for parts management, and to combat fraud. The objective? To propose innovative and differentiating solutions to the customers of the Renault-Nissan Alliance brands as well as to simplify our ways of working.
