DHL Announces Partnership With Global Blockchain Trade Finance Platform TradeIX

DHL is partnering with blockchain trade finance platform TradeIX, according to a presentation today, June 5, at the Money20/20 conference in Amsterdam.

Becky Taylor, Vice President of Commercial at DHL Supply Chain UK and Ireland, spoke about how the company has been looking to “create more efficient networks” through digitization, including a way to “serialize products to be able to track that product through its life.”

Taylor then announced the partnership by saying that DHL on its own “can’t achieve those types of funding rates to create an attractive price [for customers], so we started to work with Trade IX.”

Daniel Cotti, CFO of TradeIX, noted that the current lack of standards and interoperability in the trade finance market creates disconnected trade systems that rely on “manual, costly, tedious, error prone and redundant processes.”

According to the presentation, blockchain technology can power “leaner, more automated and error free processes and increased visibility.” TradeIX’s TIX platform will reportedly allow DHL to “embe[d] multiple funding and risk mitigation options into their product offering.”

This is not DHL’s first foray into blockchain tech – in mid-March, DHL and consulting firm Accenture announced they had jointly created a blockchain-based supply chain prototype for the pharmaceutical industry.

In mid-May, the CEO of delivery service FedEx said that blockchain is the “next frontier” for global supply chains.