Latin American financial institutions have become more open-minded about blockchain in recent years. Yet solid use cases are needed for it to become more wide-spread.
The exploratory phase of blockchain in Latam has passed – and now it is time to consolidate the technology into banks financial products and services, say the technology’s proponents. That requires not only a regulatory push to support its adoption, but also a cultural change to drive a clear, common understanding of how to build financial products on blockchain – a single, distributed registry of information. “What you need with blockchain is use cases, otherwise it’s a conversation over coffee between techies. That’s the main challenge,” says Enrique Olivera, co-founder of Finweg, a provider of electronic payments on blockchain technology. According to Olivera, going all-out with blockchain technology without a concrete business case will be a hard road for financial institutions. Rather, by starting out small and with a clear roadmap, institutions will be able to take advantage of the distributed ledger. Similarly, Daniel Kennedy, vice president of digital banking at Scotiabank, explained that although blockchain is now recognized as an established technology, the challenge is to focus on a use case where the client accesses a simple and successful product. “When the concept of Bluetooth came out more than 20 years ago, no one knew what it was all about, but everyone talked about it. Now all our lives – from cars to kitchens – can connect to our phones with Bluetooth. But, no one thinks of connecting Bluetooth, everyone thinks of connecting music or the phone. That’s probably how blockchain is going to achieve success – being used without being the focus of use,” said Kennedy, from Canada.